00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. This is
00:07the closest I'm ever going to get to Hercule Poirot. Lovely to speak to Michael Maloney
00:13on the road with Murder on the Orient Express. Dates coming up include the Mayflower, Southampton
00:19and also Brighton Theatre Royal. And goodness, we were talking about the weight and the expectation
00:26that comes with that role of Poirot. What do you do? You're saying it's all in the
00:30text that you need. Look, I think so. Look, you take all the information you can from
00:35the novels and it never stops. And also people come in with information that sometimes is
00:40conflicting. So you have to choose some piece of information and they're all correct. But
00:45the novels went on for much longer than expected. And so therefore, Poirot is a very ancient
00:50man and also a very young man, depending on the play that you're taking on board or the
00:55novel you're taking on board.
00:56Well, you could just say he's timeless, couldn't you?
00:58He's timeless. He is. He's absolutely timeless. And so that's my story and I'm sticking to
01:03it.
01:04Fair enough. And the point is that we've got to look at Poirot as a complex, real human
01:09being. He's not little grey cells. There's more to him than that, isn't there?
01:14Exactly that. Exactly that. And I think that this is a good invitation from Ken Ludwig,
01:18the adaptor of this stage play, playwright in his own right, to give us this opportunity.
01:25And you know, it will never be enough, I think. In this particular production, Poirot is humorous.
01:30He's dispassionate. He's passionate. He's angry. He loves or he understands love. And
01:38he has an incisive brain that disinterestedly picks apart the facts of this terrible case.
01:48And all those things go into it. And he suffers guilt. He suffers guilt from making his prognosis.
01:54And it really is a true prognosis one, isn't it? It's an absolutely complex end of Agatha
01:59Christie. Absolutely evil crime, isn't it?
02:05Yeah, it really is. And here comes the debate. Is the end justice or is it revenge? And people
02:13go out to the theatre talking about that, discussing about that. I'm glad that so-and-so
02:18got their comeuppance. Are you? But that's not justice. Are we going to have justice or are we
02:24going to take the law into our own hands? And that's terribly important. And there's a speech
02:28at the end of the play, by the way, which is, it is 1934. Europe is changing. There will be chaos.
02:34There will be tyranny. If we do not stand up for the law, we will be nothing left and we will have
02:39to start again. So it's quite topical, I think. Absolutely. Well, it's a fabulous play. Really
02:45look forward to seeing you in the role. Lovely to speak with you. And best wishes on the tour.
02:50Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Take care of yourselves. Thank you. Bye-bye.
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