Here’s something to help cleanse the palate from all the
saccharine that usually makes up your standard holiday entertainment. Not that I'm not a fan, but a little goes a long way ...
I don’t have a clue when or where I picked this book up, but
apparently I have a collection of Agatha Christie plays. Though some (including
me) may think they can be dated at times, a good director and a cast with
crackerjack timing can bring freshness to the material. How the show is
presented through advertising helps as well.
Rare is the person who has not heard the name Agatha
Christie. In terms of selling a show based on the author, she’s in a category
including Shakespeare, Coward, Mamet, Simon, Albee, Williams, etc. (If I’ve not
listed one of yours, forgive me, as I know I’ve temporarily misplaced some of my
favorites.)
While pondering on this experiment, I remembered the bookcase that was on the
landing at my grandma’s old house when I was 10 or 11. Among the many
paperbacks was a volume of horror stories from, if I had to guess, the late
1950s/early 1960s. For the life of me, I cannot tell you the title, but the
image of a snake with its tail dangling out of the mouth of a skull, with its
head poking through one of the eye sockets sticks with me. Pulp
fiction at its finest.
Not too hard to find a skull in clip art and you don’t need
to see all of it to know it’s a skull. Don’t be afraid to crop. Let your mind complete the image. (I was constantly told that in my college TV production class. The professor would be glad it finally stuck.) I did get a
little particular with the clock face. This is a pocket watch with the knob
edited out. It makes for an interesting monocle, doesn't it?
A weathered, off-kilter, serif font completes the look.
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