Murder on the Orient Express

Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts presents Murder on the Orient Express based on the infamous Agatha Christie novel of the same title, written by Ken Ludwig. The show is set on a train going from Istanbul to Western Europe in the dead of winter, 1934. A famous detective by the name of Hercule Poirot is the last to join the Orient Express’s laborious journey, and we meet quite an interesting group of passengers boarding with him; an exiled Russian Princess, her Swedish companion, a Hungarian countess, Minnesotan housewife, English governess, and her Scottish colonel for a lover, a shady American businessman, and his anxious secretary. What is supposed to be a relaxing vacation for Poirot swiftly becomes another crime he must solve, with only 48 hours to do so. 

Murder on the Orient Express was directed by Tony Humrichouser at Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts. All design, fabrication, and paperwork tracking was done by myself as the sole props designer and fabricator. Any furniture or set dressing pieces were reallocated to the scenic department.

Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts is an 850-seater, in-the-round theater with audience members that are as close as two feet away from the stage, so all technical elements must have a higher level of plausibility than something typically seen from fifty feet away on a proscenium stage. 

The set designer and director collaboratively wanted the world of this play to be in grayscale, so every set dressing piece had to fit with the black and silver Art Deco aesthetic that was established from the moment the process began. Though the costume designer had some more color allowed in their palette, so any personal belongings could have natural tones of brown, red, and navy. Any touches of gold or bronze in the personal luggage were repainted with chromatic silver paint to keep the hardware shiny, but within the color palette, we had established at the start of the process. We were also conscious of every bit of red that we put into the show. Agatha Christie’s novels are famous for their red herrings, so we wanted to pay homage with our own puzzle pieces thrown in. For example, the three red passports of the American passengers not only brought cohesion to their origins but made them look suspicious because of how sparsely the color was used within the show. Sometimes these red clues led to ones later in the play, such as the knife being discovered in Mrs. Hubbard’s makeup box, and some led to a dead end. 

This show has a lot to do with textures instead of patterns or colors. The bedding was chosen for its embossing and the same with the tablecloth that appears during the final two scenes. All of the drinkware visible on stage was a faux crystal. The hatbox used for the flash paper trick was refaced with velvety black cardstock paper, and a silver metal bowl was glued inside. 

The secret message trick as described in the script calls for a heat-reactive message. I created a sugar and lemon juice mixture that would react with heat on thin paper so a message would become visible. This idea was cut and traded for small sheets of flash paper that reacted faster and created a bright visual. The spirit lamp mentioned in the script was filled with water to prevent combustibles from getting on stage.