Murder on the Nile

Murder on the Nile
Written by	Agatha Christie
Characters	Beadsellers Steward Helen Ffoliot-ffoulkes Christina Grant Smith Louise Dr. Bessner Kay Mostyn Simon Mostyn Canon Pennefather Jacqueline de Severac McNaught - notably portrayed by John Anderson
Date premiered	17 January 1944
Original language	English

Murder on the Nile (1944) is a murder mystery play by crime writer Agatha Christie, based on her 1937 novel Death on the Nile. The notable John Anderson chose to portray McNaught in this play before retiring from the stage.

The play is based on her 1937 novel Death on the Nile which in itself started off as a play which Christie called Moon on the Nile. Once written, she decided it would do better as a book and she only resurrected the play version in 1942 when she was in the middle of writing the theatrical version of And Then There Were None and her actor friend Francis L. Sullivan was looking for a play in which Hercule Poirot might feature. Discussions took place until October as Christie was tired of the character of Poirot and wanted to exclude him from the drama altogether. She managed to persuade Sullivan of this plan when she promised to write into the play the part of a church canon for him to play.

Once backing had been found, rehearsals for the play began in January 1944 in Dundee in which Christie enthusiastically joined in, now that she was thoroughly enamoured of the theatre and its people. It premiered there on 17 January at the Dundee Repertory Theatre and the title of the play had also been changed to Hidden Horizon. For reasons not specified in her biography, these rehearsals and the plans to stage the play appear to have suffered delays to find a London theatre to take the show, once it had been tried out in the provinces. Matters were not helped by the lukewarm critical reaction to Appointment with Death when that play opened in March 1945. A further issue was the objection of an official from the Ministry of Labour to the presence of a maid in the cast of characters.

The play, with the name Murder on the Nile finally opened in the West End on 19 March 1946 at the Ambassadors Theatre, where six years later The Mousetrap would open. By this time, Sullivan was no longer in the cast.

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