HEIDI ARMBRUSTER
Heidi is a New York based theater artist dedicated to creating new work and discovering new approaches to classical literature and theater. Heidi was commissioned by Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival to adapt Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which premiered in their 2024 season.
“We had to read, like probably many middle school students do, And Then There Were None. It must have been in 6th grade and it just turned on my 6th grade brain – I was just on fire with the story… cabbage patch kids were big at the time and we had a Betamax camera…I filmed for our final project a Masterpiece Theater take on And Then There Were None, where I proceeded to murder my cabbage patch kids in all kinds of diabolical ways, and record it with the Betamax camera.”
After reading that confession from Heidi Armbruster, you can see why she was so successful at adapting The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) for the stage.
I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1963 when I was 14 years old. As I have mentioned in previous reminiscences of my early readings of Agatha Christie mysteries, Christie faked me out of my jock strap. She blew my mind with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and a few weeks later, she did it again with The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Only after binging on a dozen Christie novels, did I finally get the sense of how she operated. Even then, I could only identify the murderer about half the time.
If the play version of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd shows up in your neighborhood, don’t miss it! What’s your favorite Christie mystery? GRADE: A
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE/TEN LITTLE [redacted]S might be my default favorite, perhaps mostly from fondness of changes rung on it by others. My academically not too bad NH middle school wasn’t too big on novels…read it on my own (my Honolulu private 10-12th grade English class did, in 10th, GATSBY the short novella and ROMEO & JULIET).
I love the “travel trilogy”: EVIL UNDER THE SUN, DEATH ON THE NILE, and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS: big casts of characters, an enclosed setting, lots of clues & red herrings. I think DEATH IN THE CLOUDS is the most “in your face”: Christie literally shows us the main clue as to the murderer’s identity, but her touch is so light and her sleight-of-hand so perfect, you never even notice it.
I enjoyed all the Agatha novels I could get as a teenager in the 50s from the grandfather of a friendly girl.
He had such a wonderful collection and I spent many afternoons in his “home office” i e library reading – nobody was allowed to take with them one of his valuable books!
It should come as no surprise to you, George, that my favorite Christie book is the (mainly) fantasy collection THE HOUND OF DEATH. My favorite Christie novel is the historical mystery DEATH COMES AT THE END, combining Christie’s interest in intricate plotting and archaeology, and taking place in 2000 BC Thebes.