By Josh Kennedy

WKTV Intern

 

Decades before Gillian Flynn wrote “Gone Girl” and long before Dennis Lehane penned “Shutter Island,” Agatha Christie wrote “And Then There Were None,” one of the best selling murder mysteries in history.

 

This story will be brought to stage Aug. 17-19 and 24-26 at the Shadblow Theater at the Jension Center for the Performing Arts, with many of the actors hail from Wyoming and Kentwood. 

 

“And Then Where None,” original written in 1939, is a murder mystery that will keep the audience guessing until the final act. This psychological thriller follows a group of seemingly normal people who are invited to an island retreat by an eccentric millionaire. Once a gramophone announces the group’s sins to all the other occupants things start to get interesting and people start to disappear. 

 

“I think to be able write like Agatha Christie, you would have to draw on the people around you in life,” said Director Kristin Tomlin. “And the characters in here, some of them are so much large than life, that you must think, she must know someone like that.”

 

This is fairly evident as the various cast members describe their characters. After all, who hasn’t run into someone like the fanatically religious spinster Emily Caroline Brent, portrayed by Wyoming resident Cathy Van Lopek.

 

“She is very judgmental about everybody she comes across,” Van Lopek said. “I don’t think there is a human being living on the Earth who meets her standards.”

 

Then there is the action-first, think-later Capt. Philip Lomard, played by David Cobb.

 

“He’s the adventurer,” Cobb said. “The man of action. I think he is the first one who gets a little suspicious about everything.”

 

Also among the guests is former detective William Henry Blore. “He is not a very good detective,” said William Cope who plays Blore. “He is kind of incompetent and bites at every single red herring that is offered.”

 

The storyline itself — which is based off an old children’s rhyme — is a difficult one that very much intrigued the author.

 

“One thing she said about this play is that the idea of it was so challenging and so difficult to her she just had to do it,” Tomlin said. “She just had to try and write it.”

 

In fact, at first, no one wanted to produce the play version of Christie’s “And Then There Were None” because they insisted that the storyline wouldn’t work on stage and that people would laugh at it. In 2015, it was voted the World’s Favorite Christie story having been made into several movies with such groups as the Superman comics and “Family Guy” making parodies of it.

 

Who’s pulling the strings and who is just trying to stay alive? You’ll just have to catch the show, Aug. 17-26, to find out. Show times are 7:30 p.m Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at the Jension Center for the Performing Arts, 8375 20th Ave., Jenison. Tickets are $16.50/adult, $13/seniors who are 60 and older, and $8/students under 18.