All aboard for new classic mystery at Circa

Circa ’21’s new production is a relatively new stage adaptation of the classic mystery comedy “Murder on the Orient Express.”

In this spellbinding guessing game by Agatha Christie, adapted for the theater in 2017 by Tony-Award nominee Ken Ludwig, famous detective Hercule Poirot is called back from Istanbul to London on urgent business. He intends to book a first-class compartment on the Orient Express, run by his former friend and colleague Monsieur Bouc.

Although the train is surprisingly full, Bouc manages to secure Poirot a spot in the first-class cabin, and while aboard, Poirot meets a host of peculiar characters: an aging Russian princess, her Swedish companion, a Hungarian countess, a Minnesota housewife, a Scottish colonel, an English governess, a French conductor, a disagreeable American businessman and his anxious secretary.

During their travels, the angry businessman, Samuel Ratchett, corners Poirot and demands that the detective investigate a series of ominous letters that have been sent to Ratchett, threatening his life. Poirot refuses, but after a snowdrift halts the Orient Express in its tracks, Ratchett is found stabbed multiple times in his locked train compartment. Poirot is consequently tasked by Bouc to solve the murder, as the killer could still be in their midst. As Poirot investigates, conflicting clues and convoluted alibis lead him to dead ends.

Directing Circa ’21’s first 2024 show is venue veteran Corinne Johnson, the former St. Ambrose University theater professor who most recently helmed the theater’s 2021 musical “Disenchanted” and whose additional area credits have included directing “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues” and “The Glass Menagerie” for the Mississippi Bend Players.

Playing the iconic Poirot is Circa fave Tom Walljasper, who has amassed more than 100 credits at the theater over the decades and was recently seen in “Grumpy Old Men: The Musical” and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

Johnson (a longtime SAU theater professor) has taught and directed at Central Lakes College in Brainerd, Minn., the past two years. She last directed at Circa in fall 2021 in the Disney spoof “Disenchanted.”

A dream cast

“It’s a wonderful way for me to connect with friends,” she said Tuesday of coming back to the QC and Circa. “It is a dream cast, I get a little teary. I’ve missed it – I missed the passion and creativity that this cast is giving me in spades.”

She has directed Tom and Shelley Walljasper (who are both in the new cast) over the years, and acted with Tom in some Circa shows many years ago (including “Don’t Dress for Dinner”).

Johnson loves murder mysteries, and Christie (1890-1976) is the queen of the form.

“I think a lot of theaters this size across the country are discovering this script and are doing it,” Walljasper said. “A lot of theaters are doing it.”

He has not seen the film versions of “Murder on the Orient Express,” including the 1974 version (starring Albert Finney as Poirot), or the 2017 movie (starring Kenneth Branagh).

Walljasper likes the Uta Hagen theory of comparing acting to inviting a guest to tea.

“Your story – the length, the depth, the detail – is the tea filling the teacup, and if you go too far, it spills out and it is useless,” he said. “I start with the script and I go, how much of what’s here can I use? And how much do I need to go out of this to fill the teacup?”

“My job as a professional actor is to look at this page and find out how I can bring this character in this story to life,” Walljasper said. “If I start looking at other actors do it, I’m thinking, do I need to that? I don’t feel like I’ve done my job as a creative person.”

“This script is strong, I have an awesome director and that is kind of what I do,” he said.

In a 2022 interview with playwright Ken Ludwig, who adapted the Christie 1934 story, he said he chose it “because it is such a stunning mystery in so many ways. The setting is exotic, the characters are colorful, and though the names are changed, it’s based on an historical event—the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby—which dominated the news at the time the book was written. That historical context gives the story special consequence: this shocking crime has gone unsolved, and the killer is aboard the Orient Express.

“Also, because the novel was written in the mid-1930s, I was able to cast a glance at the rise of Hitler,” Ludwig said. “Finally, the glamour of the Orient Express itself gives a designer enormous scope to create a memorable occasion.”

Love for storytelling

Walljasper researched Istanbul and Scotland Yard to help him set the scene as an actor, and storyteller.

“I believe as an actor, when I’m up there telling a story – I believe the character has to see those pictures as well. Otherwise, we’re just saying words that have been memorized,” he said Tuesday. “If we see the pictures, we see the detail – the gold, the tables, the outside. And when we see those pictures, the character helps the audience see them.”

He likes to create magic on stage, becoming different characters.

“It’s the power of what it is we do,” Walljasper said. “The challenge for me and the reason I’ve been able to work so long, is to vary the characters I do. Every character is a little different.”

“You have to believe in it too,” he said. “You have to take on those roles, and you have to believe. You learn a lot about yourself, human beings, within the storytelling and becoming these different people.”

Johnson saw a production of this show last summer at the Guthrie in Minneapolis, which had a much bigger budget and more “bells and whistles,” in a multimedia sense. She could not do that kind of production at Circa, though it does have projections by Khalil Hacker (including an opening video), a stunning set by SAU alum Becky Meissen and a number of sound effects.

“I like simplicity often better than lots of bells and whistles,” Johnson said. “The relative simplicity of doing it without all the facilities the Guthrie has, takes you back to the script…It’s very theatrical, in all the best ways.”

Walljasper said the best way for an audience to come to a show is with no expectations, but absorb it all fresh and new. “Sit down and see what they give you.”

He directed the big musical “Into the Woods” at Countryside in Eldridge this past summer and has directed Circa children’s shows, but not mainstage shows at the dinner theater. Walljasper was the youngest director at Music Guild, while he was in college.

“Every wonderful director and coach influences me, absolutely,” he said. “One of the reasons I submitted for this show is, I’ve worked with Cory, I love Cory. I love the academia aspect that comes in.”

For musicals, “we are not in the business of singing songs and dancing. We’re in the business of telling stories,” Walljasper said. “That’s what I enjoy the most, is telling stories. I knew coming into this, it would be focused on the story.”

The best directors teach and coach when they direct, he said.

“I’m learning about Poirot – who he is and what drives him,” Walljasper said of the legendary detective. “Since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated with stories.”

Bringing live theater back

Nothing really killed live storytelling (not movies, TV or streaming) until COVID, he said of 2020, when theaters worldwide were shut down and people couldn’t gather together to see live shows.

The electrifying thrill of theater is that live, unique, communal aspect – when every production can be different, they said.

“Every single age loves a good story,” Walljasper said.

“The audience – their response, actors take it as a sponge. It’s reciprocal,” Johnson said. “It’s not the same every night. People are hearing it differently.”

“My professor in college said, one person out there will love everything you’re doing and love the story, and the person right next to him is going to hate everything you’re doing and is bored to death,” Walljasper recalled. “As an actor, you have to realize that.”

“You can’t hear smiles,” he said. “We are coming here for them – it’s not the opposite. The audience isn’t coming here to see you. I think a good actor becomes a sharing actor, when they realize they’re coming to the theater for this group of people coming together to watch this story.”

“It makes you appreciate what you’re doing – the power and the magic of storytelling,” Walljasper added.

As the detective, Poirot is a performer in a way, for his guests.

“It’s passion, of doing his job – he has a reputation of being correct, precise, observant, and he takes that very seriously,” Walljasper said.

It’s the same for him as an actor.

“I have never, when I come to my job, say I have to work,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of actors say that exact word. To me, my father had to work at a factory and hated every minute of it. I realized, I didn’t want to be like that.

‘It’s not work’

“So to me, it’s not work; it’s a privilege,” Walljasper said. “Sometimes, I piss and moan because I’m impatient with myself. I want it to happen right away – with costumes, with props, with lines, and I get very frustrated with myself, with the situation, if I’m letting the team down. I always have those moments in rehearsal when I’m angry with myself.”

He seeks confidence and comfort as an actor, and wants not only to say the lines, but live the character fully.

“I can look in an actor’s eye and can tell if they’re telling me a memorized line or if they’re the character and we’re in it. I can tell,” Walljasper said. “My goal is to be immersed in it.”

“If you’re giving it to me and I’m giving it to you, that’s why I’m doing it. I don’t need an audience,” he said. “I love the pretend aspect of it. That’s why I do film.”

Johnson agreed, noting a scene between Walljasper and another Ambrose grad, Kyle DeFauw.

“It was like there they were. These two wonderful people I know and like Went away, and their characters were just there existing, and spurring each other on to action,” she said. “They carried me away, and I was wondering what’s gonna happen next.”

Kyle DeFauw (Circa ’21’s “Beauty & the Beast” and “Clue: The Musical”) portrays Poirot’s friend Bouc, and with Brad Hauskins and Sydney Richardson as understudies, Johnson’s cast is completed by Bear Manescalchi, Quinnie Rodman, Savannah Bay Strandin, Tristan Tapscott, Kim VanDerGinst, Shelley Walljasper, Cara Moretto and Micah Weese.

Walljasper has no desire to be in a Broadway musical or to see shows on Broadway.

“I’m not a theatergoer,” he said. “I was in five shows before I ever saw one live…I accidentally fell into this.”

Johnson directed the play “Silent Sky” twice last year, including at University of Minnesota-Duluth last winter, and this past fall at Central Lakes College (a community college 130 miles north of Minneapolis).

She will resign from the college after this school year, directing “August: Osage County” this June, and then look for freelance work.

“Murder on the Orient Express” will be presented at Circa through March 2 on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 5:30 p.m., and Wednesday matinées at 1:15 p.m. Pre-show entertainment featuring the theater’s wait staff, The Bootleggers, also will precede all performances.

Ticket prices are $63 for the Friday-to-Sunday dinner-and-show productions ($66 for opening night) and $56 for all Wednesday performances. Reduced prices for students, seniors, and groups of 12 or more also are available for all performances. 

Reservations are available through the Circa ’21 box office at 1828 3rd Ave., Rock Island, or by calling 309-786-7733 ext. 2.

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