Final Boarding Call for Murder on the Orient Express

Interview with Murder on the Orient Express directors, Brenden and Wynter Elwood

Q: Why this play? What made you want to bring this story to the community?

First of all it's a fun, interesting, and classic story. We love mysteries and Agatha Christie is a master.

Then, we wanted to try to figure out how to tie in more of our community with a play and one of the assets that we have in North Bend is the train depot. When we originally conceived what we're going to do with this we thought a lot about how cool it would be to do parts of a show over there or take the cast over there - do whatever we could to partner with the Train Museum as a means to just reaching out a hand and doing more together collectively in our community. And since we listen to the train drive through every Sunday matinee, in a way it’s already a character in every show. So it seemed fitting to bring the train into the theater.

Q: What do you want people to know about this show?

For the die-hard Agatha Christie fans, they need to know that Ken Ludwig’s adaptation has some interesting combinations of characters that are a bit different from the book. Then he puts a comedy spin on it and since Agatha Christie's original characters are so rich and funny and detailed that it brings out these charming humorous bits even though it's serious storytelling.

Interestingly this is the only play adaptation. Apparently you have to go to the Agatha Christie House to get permission to modify any of her stories. They specifically requested Ken Ludwig, to have him write the play. While there are a lot of TV spins and movie spins, there is only this play.

Q:What character(s) do you find most compelling and why?

All of them. Everyone has got their quirky coolness. It’s obviously centered around Poirot but he's a platform on his own space and then he serves up all these other platforms for his counterparts to play with. There's a whole set of completely different characters. It doesn't feel like there's any one character - everybody's got their unique thing which is so fun.

We have so many dialects and everybody's committed to that character role. What's great about that is their all uniquely different which adds a different dynamic when you are watching the play. Belgian, Russian, Hungarian, French, Swedish, English, Scottish and American. Listening to how everything works together on this International stage stands out as it's essentially the creating the setting and brings that to be a character all in itself.

Q: I wanted to ask you about having a well known character like Poirot, who is almost a stereotype. Does that make it harder? Does that change anything?

Yes and no. Everybody has their thought of who Poirot is; a funny little man with a big mustache. When you look at all the film adaptations throughout the years they’ve all played them similarly. It gave us a blueprint to work with but it also gives us some freedom within that quirky little character for the actor to actually do something of their own. We didn't want to detract and do something completely different because we know that people are coming in to see the story that they're familiar with. Die hard Christie fans we believe are looking forward to seeing their familiar characters.

We've talked to a lot of people about how to spin this play, and we landed on not deviating too much from what one would expect. Which in a way is rewarding. We didn’t want this to be distracting and we wanted to have people sit back, relax, forget about their life, and just enjoy the story.

Q: What has been the biggest challenge of the show?

The setting on a train with multiple cars in the space that we have. We’re suspending realism, right? The train cars are at right angles, not in a straight line, so we just have to ask the audience to accept the belief that the train is running around crazy long curves.

Q: Tell me about your theatre background. How did you get involved in theatre? Why do you love it?

[Brenden] I had some early commercial/film experience, but I didn't discover theatre until college. I was walking across campus one night and I saw that the studio door was open. I went in and sat down and there were these students there doing a lot of fun looking exercises and things. It just seemed weird and fun and they were having a blast. Since I was taking a lot of hard core science classes, like organic chem, I decided to start taking these classes to break up the seriousness of my life and it just really connected with me. The idea that you can go into an environment that’s fictional, take words that are printed on a page, and turn them into reality is just - is a magical thing.

Q: How did you become involved with Valley Center Stage? What do you love about VCS?

We moved here in 2008 and we were excited to see there was a theater here. We had been off for 5 years while starting our family. Brenden started exploring and was cast for 24 hours of Shakespeare in Tacoma and was playing Prince Hal and Henry the 4th part 1 part 2 and then Henry V, so he did the three principal parts in that series in a weekend. One of the directors there was also directing a play at VCS called Curious Savage and they needed to cast somebody after they had already begun rehearsals. They were getting close to the production and she asked Brenden if he would come in and he said sure! And that was kind of the beginning of it.

Then the linchpin was when they asked Brenden to be Dracula. We remember looking at each other, thinking “Oh my God, we don't have time for this - but it's Dracula!”

The other part that we like so much is that this is truly a community theatre. Our friends, family and neighbors are fully committed. We have a whole range of different talents and different interests. And it's always exciting, especially with people who come in and want to be a part of a show but have never been a part of a show. It's really exciting to watch them open up and move on. And then it’s always great to work with very seasoned actors who just are either not professional anymore or, you know, it was a big part of their lives at one point in time but now you know the real world kicked in. All levels, talents and energies are what bring to life our theater - that’s what we love!