Two-time Olivier Award nominee Peter Polycarpou will play Agatha Christie’s legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in the UK & Ireland tour of The Hollow
Peter Polycarpou’s recent stage credits include Les Misérables: The Arena Concert Spectacular, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Hello, Dolly!, while his screen work includes House of the Dragon, Birds of a Feather, The Brutalist and Evita. He received Olivier nominations for his performances in Oslo and The Band’s Visit.
Following sell-out tours of And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, producers Fiery Angel and director Lucy Bailey (director of the hit London show Witness for the Prosecution) partner once again to bring one of Agatha Christie’s psychologically complex mysteries to the stage this autumn.
Agatha Christie’s masterpiece The Hollow is coming to Norwich Theatre Royal between 4 – 8 May 27 in a new version by Tamsin Oglesby (Future Conditional, Old Vic Theatre and Really Old, Like Forty Five, National Theatre) as part of a major UK and Ireland tour.
The Hollow is produced by Fiery Angel in association with Agatha Christie Limited and the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury. The production is directed by Lucy Bailey, with set and costume design by Joanna Parker, lighting design by Chris Davey, sound design and composition by Nick Powell and casting by Ginny Schiller.
Renowned detective Hercule Poirot expected a quiet break in the country; instead he’s drawn into one of the most unsettling cases of his career.
At The Hollow, an elegant country estate, a glamorous circle of guests gather together one summer evening. But beneath the sunlit charm, something darker coils. Old passions refuse to die. New rivalries ignite. Dangerous infatuations take hold. Then — a shot rings out.
A body is discovered. A smoking revolver in an unsteady hand. The scene appears almost staged; a shockingly straightforward crime…. It is anything but.
James Prichard of Agatha Christie Limited said, “We are thrilled to be working once again with Lucy Bailey and Fiery Angel on this bold new production of The Hollow.
A sharply observed and unsettling drama, it showcases a fascinatingly different facet of my great grandmother’s storytelling, and we are excited for audiences across the UK and Ireland to experience it anew.”
Having recently directed four of Christie’s classic thrillers for the stage, this will be Lucy Bailey’s fifth.
She said, “The Hollow is one of Agatha Christie’s most powerful and arresting plays. At first glance it appears to be a classic country-house mystery, but it’s something far richer: a family ruthlessly clinging to the past, failed relationships and illicit love.
Christie gathers a circle of brilliantly drawn characters to an English country estate and lets long-buried family tensions simmer until a sudden act of violence shatters the idyll. When the unthinkable happens, it falls to the incomparable Hercule Poirot to unravel the truth.
Equally comic and tragic, it’s a play about people trapped between the lives they have and the lives they longed for. That tension makes The Hollow feel startlingly contemporary.”
