Mystery: 10 Unknown Plays By Agatha Christie Discovered | Playbill

News Mystery: 10 Unknown Plays By Agatha Christie Discovered Producer Julius Green, according to The Stage, discovered five full-length and five one-act plays by Agatha Christie while researching his new book, "Curtain Up: Agatha Christie – A Life in Theatre," which will be published by HarperCollins in September in the U.K. and in December in the U.S.

Among the previously undiscovered works by the author of the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, are a stage version of her novel "Towards Zero"; a domestic drama entitled The Lie; The Clutching Hand; an adaptation of Christie's short story "Philomel Cottage," The Stranger; and Someone at the Window, adapted from the short story "The Dead Harlequin." (Both "Zero" and "Cottage" had been reworked for the stage by other playwrights, but it had previously been unknown that Christie wrote her own adaptations.) About his discovery Green told The Stage, "Most of them them were part of the archive material that was held at the Christie archive, but people hadn’t really picked them up and asked: 'What is this?,' because there’s just so much material there."

The producer-writer added, "Oddly, despite the fact she’s the most successful female playwright of all time, she’s pretty well been written out of the history books as a playwright, other than the obvious one [The Mousetrap]. …People forget that in the 1950s she was arguably the most successful playwright in the country, she’s the only woman ever to have had three plays on in the West End simultaneously. So this is a forgotten piece of theatre history."

Whether these unearthed plays will be produced has yet to be announced.

 
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