Spider's Web is a play by crime writer Agatha Christie. Spider's Web, which premiered in London's West End in 1954, is Agatha Christie's second most successful play (744 performances),[1] having run longer than Witness for the Prosecution, which premiered in 1953 (458 performances).[2] It is surpassed only by Christie's record-breaking The Mousetrap, which has run continuously since opening in the West End in 1952.
Spider's Web was written at the request of its star, Margaret Lockwood, whose main body of work was in films and who had never appeared in a West End production aside from Peter Pan. In 1953, Lockwood asked her agent, Herbert de Leon, to speak with Sir Peter Saunders, who was the main producer of Christie's work on the stage after the successes of The Hollow and The Mousetrap, and see if Christie would be interested in writing a play for her.
Saunders arranged a meeting between Christie and Lockwood at the Mirabelle restaurant. During the conversation, Lockwood requested that she not play a sinister or wicked part again (for which she was well known) but a role in a "comedy thriller." She also requested a part for Wilfrid Hyde-White, with whom she wanted to act and who was also on the books of de Leon. In any event, although the part was written, Hyde-White declined the role and Sir Felix Aylmer was cast instead.[3]
Christie wrote the play during the period of the final rehearsals for Witness for the Prosecution,[4] which opened to rave reviews in London on 28 October 1953. Lockwood's character was given the name of Clarissa, the name of Christie's beloved mother who had died back in 1926. Unasked, Christie also wrote a role which would be suitable for Lockwood's fourteen-year-old daughter, Julia, although Margaret Barton played the part in the finished production.
Although the play is an original piece, within it Christie utilised four plot devices from earlier works she had written:
The play opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 27 September 1954,[5] followed by a short national tour and then had its West End opening on 13 December 1954 at the Savoy Theatre,[6] where it ran for 774 performances. With The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution still running, Christie was at the peak of her West End career.
On 7 March 1955, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret were among the audience for a performance of the play.[7]
Clarissa Hailsham-Brown is the second wife of Henry, a Foreign Office diplomat, and stepmother to Henry's twelve-year-old daughter, Pippa. They are currently living at Copplestone Court, a large house in Kent they are renting for cheap. Three guests stay with them: Sir Rowland Delahaye, Clarissa's Guardian in his fifties; Hugo Birch, an irascible man in his sixties and a local justice of the peace; and a young man named Jeremy Warrender. The three men are currently engaged in frivolous contests devised by Clarissa to pass the time after their golf match was rained off. Clarissa explains to Jeremy that the bases of the contests are entirely fictitious; since people always believe her when she tells stories but never when she tells the truth, she uses this to her advantage to make her life more interesting.
Pippa arrives home from school and Clarissa leaves the room with her. Momentarily alone, Jeremy hastily searches a desk in the room until he is interrupted by the arrival of Mildred Peake, a hearty country woman who lives in a cottage on the estate as its gardener. She leaves, and Pippa reappears carrying an old book that she describes as a "recipe book". Pippa enthuses over the house and shows Jeremy a hidden door at the back of the room which conceals a small recess that connects to the library.
The three guests prepare to eat at the nearby golf club as the Elgins, Clarissa's butler and cook, are taking the night off. Sir Rowland and Clarissa discuss Pippa's biological mother, Miranda, and her drug-dealing lover, Oliver Costello. A phone call to the house is cut off when Clarissa tells the caller that her name is not Brown but Hailsham-Brown. Clarissa tells Sir Rowland that the house and its furnishings used to belong to a Mr Sellon, a now-deceased antique dealer, and that occasional enquiries are received about his furniture, including one for the desk that Jeremy searched earlier. Pippa reveals that she has discovered a secret drawer in the desk containing an envelope with three autographed papers inside, signed by Queen Victoria, John Ruskin, and Robert Browning.
The guests leave for the golf club. Soon after, Oliver Costello appears at the door, demanding custody of Pippa for Miranda and himself. Clarissa guesses that Miranda and Costello's real motive is to obtain money from Henry and she accuses him of blackmail; Mr Elgin overhears the word as he leaves. Clarissa threatens to expose Costello and Miranda's drug activities and throws him out of the house with the help of Miss Peake. Pippa, hysterical after seeing Costello, is sent out for a bath.
Henry comes home briefly, telling his wife that he has been entrusted to host a secret meeting with a foreign diplomat that night at the house, and leaves to fetch him. Costello appears in the French windows, enters the now-empty drawing room, and searches the desk. The door of the hidden recess opens behind him and an unseen hand clubs him down. Clarissa re-enters the room and finds his body; Pippa enters through the hidden recess and hysterically claims responsibility.
Pippa has been put to bed with a sleeping draught. Clarissa has set up an in-progress game of bridge when her three guests return. Revealing Costello's body and claiming responsibility, she asks them to move it to Costello's distant car; the bridge game she is setting up will serve as their alibi. The three reluctantly agree to her plan after Clarissa privately tells Sir Rowland that Pippa admitted to the murder. The guests move the body into the recess with the intention of moving it to the car later, but they are interrupted when Police Inspector Lord unexpectedly arrives, following a phone call report of a murder at the house.
Initial questioning reveals that Mr Sellon was found dead in his shop supposedly from a fall down the stairs. There were suspicions that he was involved in dealing drugs, and a note he left behind suggested he had acquired an unknown item worth fourteen thousand pounds. In the meantime, the police locate Costello's car in the grounds, containing documents confirming his identity. Clarissa reluctantly admits to his visit. Miss Peake testifies that she showed him off the grounds earlier in the evening, but also reveals the existence of the hidden recess. She opens it, revealing Costello's body.
Miss Peake, suffering hysterics, has been helped upstairs. The police question every person separately, including the Elgins, who returned early after Mrs Elgin became ill. Mr Elgin testifies his hearing Clarissa saying "blackmail". Hugo is unable to provide any useful information. During Jeremy's questioning, the police find the gloves used to move Costello, as well as a stray, unused playing card from the pack Clarissa used to set up bridge, which requires a full deck of cards.
The Inspector detects discrepancies in the guests' stories as he questions Sir Rowland. Bringing Clarissa back, Sir Rowland tells her to tell the police the truth. Clarissa tells the Inspector exactly what happened when she discovered the scene, but omits Pippa's confession. When the Inspector is unconvinced, she confesses to the crime herself, but claims she thought Costello was a burglar. Questioned over her use of the word "blackmail", she claims the discussion was about the cheap rental price of the house. As the Inspector walks Clarissa through her story in detail, he opens the recess door to find that Costello's body has disappeared.
While the police search the house and grounds for Costello's body, Miss Peake comes downstairs and confides in the residents that she feigned her hysteria. As a crime cannot be charged without the primary evidence, she removed the body from the recess via the library and hid it under her bed. Pippa returns from her room, drowsy, and produces a wax doll; her "recipe book" was a tome on witchcraft, and she thought she had killed Costello with a legitimate magic spell.
Clarissa suddenly recalls the name of Sellon's antique shop, "Sellon and Brown", and the abrupt phone call asking for Mrs Brown. Connecting this realization to a comment Costello made to Miss Peake that he came to see "Mrs Brown", Clarissa realizes that Miss Peake is the real Mrs Brown, Sellon's former partner. Miss Peake confirms her identity, explaining that the house was rented cheaply to Clarissa to install a different Mrs Brown, which would lure thieves who were after Sellon's unknown item.
Sir Rowland speculates that the autographed papers in the desk might contain invisible ink. Testing them reveals the names of six drug distributors, including Costello. The residents leave to inform the police, leaving Pippa asleep. After a moment, Jeremy re-enters and is about to murder Pippa when Clarissa appears, realizing that Jeremy is the killer: Jeremy had left the other two men alone at the club for a period, and Pippa recalled seeing him with a golf club despite no game taking place. He also rang the police to try to incriminate Clarissa. Jeremy confesses, revealing Sellon's mysterious asset: an extremely rare error stamp, posted on the envelope with the autographed papers. Jeremy admits to killing Sellon in his shop when he went looking for the stamp, and realized after the murder that the stamp was in his house. He killed Costello because he thought that Costello was also looking for it.
Before he can kill Clarissa, the police enter the room and arrest him. They take him and Costello's recovered body away, though Lord admonishes Clarissa and Miss Peake for their attempts to cover up the murder. After the guests retire to bed, Henry returns without the foreign diplomat, who never arrived. A call for Henry quickly comes in revealing that the diplomat's absence was a ruse for security reasons, and that the diplomat and the foreign minister are currently on their way to the house. Henry expresses frustration at the state of the house, still unkempt from the investigation. Clarissa tries to explain what had happened that evening, but Henry doesn't believe a word of it. As he leaves to answer the doorbell, Clarissa decides to "disappear mysteriously" into the hidden recess.
Kenneth Tynan was a fan, writing in The Observer, "Those who grieve that our drama is a ritualistic art no longer should see Mrs. Christie's Spider’s Web and be consoled, for the detective play, in which a nameless avenger strikes down a chosen victim, is governed by conventions every bit as strict as those of Greek tragedy. Audiences who emerged from Witness for the Prosecution murmuring 'How clever she is!', will probably emerge from Spider’s Web murmuring 'How clever I am!'"[8]
With 744 performances Spider’s Web clearly appealed to audiences—despite mixed reviews from some critics—as it enjoyed the longest first run of any Christie play apart from The Mousetrap. For instance The Times was not overly enthusiastic in its review of 15 December 1954[9] when it said, "Miss Agatha Christie tries this time to combine a story of murder with a comedy of character. As Edgar Wallace showed more than once, this thing can be done. There is no reason why the special tension of the one should not support the special tension of the other. In this instance, however, the support is at best intermittent. There is a risk that those that are chiefly concerned to find out who murdered the odious blackmailer will hardly regard the solution as one of the author's happiest. There is a like risk that the rest of the audience will be bored with a comedy which has to accommodate itself to the requirements of a long police interrogation. The common ground on which both sections may stand is dangerously small." The reviewer admitted that, "the thriller gives all the characters a turn and yet contrives at the end to produce a twist. It is a twist which surprises rather than satisfies the logical mind", but they concluded, "the play as a whole is the least exciting and not the most amusing of the three Agatha Christie's now running in London."
Alvin Klein, reviewing a 1997 production for The New York Times, fell for the play's inherent comedy and the appeal of its main character, saying "What sets Spider's Web apart from most specimens of its overstuffed genre, is that its real motive is fun; all else—dropped clues, plot contrivances—is secondary. And the Lady of Copplestone Court, Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, has a talent to amuse."[10]
Director: Wallace Douglas
Cast of London production:[11]
The play was first published by Samuel French Ltd. in 1957 as French's Acting Edition No. 834.
Like Black Coffee (1998) and The Unexpected Guest (1999), the script of the play was turned into a novel of the same name by Charles Osborne. It was published in the UK by HarperCollins in 2000.
The play was adapted for BBC TV in 1955 starring Margaret Lockwood. Wallace Douglas directed.[12] Lockwood would not reprise her performance in the feature film version.[13]
The play was next adapted as a television movie aired in West Germany on 19 August 1956. This version was directed by Fritz Umgelter, and starred Marlies Schönau and Günter König.
In 1960, the play was turned into a film with the slightly extended title of The Spider's Web. Glynis Johns played the part of Clarissa with none of the actors from the stage production making the cross-over to the film. The screenplay, adapted from Christie's text, was by Eldon Howard and direction was by Godfrey Grayson.
In 1982, the BBC produced the work as a one-hour-and-forty-five-minute television play which starred Penelope Keith in the role of Clarissa. Cedric Messina was the producer with Basil Coleman directing. This version was broadcast in December on BBC Two.[14]
Cast of the 1982 BBC production: