Murder, Margaret and Me has had a highly successful run in England and recently enjoyed its American premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival. The one-woman show portrays the relationship between three English icons. Two are real, mystery author Agatha Christie and actress Margaret Rutherford (crowned "The Funniest Woman Alive"), and one is fictional, Christie's beloved character Miss Jane Marple, amateur detective extraordinaire. Murder, Margaret and Me takes the audience into a private moment in which the author and the actress meet. The reason? Rutherford has been cast in the role of Miss Marple for a series of films and both Christie and Rutherford have reservations.
Actress Janet Prince, who will play all three of them when the play is presented at the FringeNYC Encore Series September 13-20, invited StageBuddy into her Soho loft for a mug of English tea and some talk about playing three iconic women and what it’s like to transfer a very British play to New York City.
STAGEBUDDY: First of all, congratulations on Murder, Margaret and Me being selected for the Fringe Encore series.
JANET PRINCE: Oh, yes, it’s great for me because the Fringe is like a blur, to be honest. Coming from overseas, although I lived in New York for three years before, I had to acquire my set, that was the first thing. I only brought my small props. I had this lovely girl from Yale who hired a car and we were just driving around frantically looking for Agatha Christie’s table and typewriter and the little table with the lamp for the spinster, and something to represent the dressing room for Margaret Rutherford. And it all had to be flame-proofed because they had so many sets piled there piled on top of each other that you really have to be careful about it to avoid disaster.
How much time did you have to set up?
No time! (laughs) What you get is double your performance time. So we didn’t even get to the end of the show, we didn’t even get the sound, so the first performance was quite interesting! I think it was a little too loud! Plus people couldn’t really see because that venue didn’t have particularly good eye-line as you know. It’s really brutal as you say in this country. But we’ve got more time in Baruch. And much more space.
How did this piece find you?
Karin Koren, who runs Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh, commissioned it for me because we’re very, very, very old friends and I helped her set up the Gilded Balloon years and years ago. She’s always been trying to find a piece for me. Philip Meeks got in touch with her and wanted her to do another play and she said she didn’t want to do that but would he do something for me? So he phoned me up and said he’d remembered he had a treatment for a radio play that he’d been commissioned to do about this subject. And he said, how do you feel about doing that? And I said the thought of playing Margaret Rutherford, who’s an iconic British character, and the thought of playing three different people but her in particular, I thought my goodness I can’t do this!
But he pursued it and he came up with a raw script and then I found Stella Duffy. You’re saying how did the script find me? How I found her is just, you know how those things work? Synchronicity sometimes. I knew Stella, we’d crossed paths over the years and I knew that she directed a bit and I said, would you be interested? And it turns out unbeknown to me she’d written thirteen successful crime novels! And she wrote the introduction to the Miss Marple short story compendium! You couldn’t have chosen a better person. And so she got Philip and me into a room. Didn’t know either of us that well, to be honest. And she did this really strange Q and A with us. She had this method to start dragging stuff out of us. And Philip just went away and wrote the script. And he came back with it and Stella edited it brilliantly. And it was her direction that really brought out the characters. Here at the Fringe we had to cut all the sound cues in half, all the light cues in half. When it goes into Baruch I will take more time going from one character to another. You know those diagrams of the ape turning into Man? (laughs) That’s what it felt like as Margaret Rutherford slowly turned into Agatha Christie! And now I just have a bit longer to do it on a larger stage, really. Philip always loved Margaret Rutherford since he was a kid, so for him it was something he always had in the back of his head as a writer. So he’s thoroughly enjoyed being able to develop this story. He knew the whole mystery element, what happened to her.
Prior to this play, were you an admirer of Margaret Rutherford?
Not at all, so that's been a complete research thing for me. I've got all the old films here, actually. I bring them with me and I'll occasionally put one on and just have a little look at her. I am an admirer now, I think she sounded a wonderful woman.
What attracted Stella to all three characters was that they are all three strong women. Agatha Christie and Margaret Rutherford, at the time were quite impressive really. They were successful women in their own right. And they both had similar traits. There are photos of them and they even look alike! I've obviously become very fond of them. They’ve become very dear to me because I've been able to travel around the country with them and bring them here.
Has it been different performing this play here in New York?
Yes. People don't laugh as much here. There are references Americans must not get. It doesn’t get the laughs it got in England. There is a joke that got a roar in England which was, "You can't have a tepid boiled egg because it would disappoint the soldiers." And nobody knows what a "soldier' is here. Do you?
No.
In England we cut off toast into fingers and you dip them in your egg and they're called soldiers. Don't tell me why, it's not a particularly good joke. (laughs) And Joan Hickson doesn't have the recognition here that she does in England. There's a bit where Rutherford says, “Lovely little actress, Joan Hickson, but she'll never have much of a career, bless her.” She was one of the in a film with Rutherford as a waitress, that's what she's talking about, but Joan Hickson went on to be one of the major Miss Marples on the telly. I would say it doesn't seem to be as amusing here so it must be very English in that respect. People are pulled in by the story, but it's quite English in its jokes.
What future plans do you have with this play?
I suppose I wanted to bring it here very much because it's had a good old run in England, really. I want it to have a life in America. I think it is something Americans would enjoy from the subject matter and the fact that Agatha Christie is so well known. She's more read than the Bible. I would love to have it in a small theatre for a nice little run around Christmas in the snow! In Manhattan! I don't ask for much!
Murder, Margaret and Me, a FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award winner, will be presented at the Baruch Performing Arts Center (55 Lexington Avenue, entrance on 25th Street) Sept. 13 at 3 PM; Sept. 19 & 20 at 7 PM
