Christie In Love

Christie in Love

By Howard Brenton

Directed by Katie McGerr

October 27th at 8pm
October 28th and October 29th
at 8 and 11 pm

"Some like it hot, some like it cold...some like it alive, some like it dead. And sometimes, even your own fancy is tickled. We are human..."

In 1953, John Reginald Halliday Christie sublet his Notting Hill flat - in which police later found the dead bodies of seven women. A constable and an inspector are sent to question Christie and dig up his garden in Howard Brenton's darkly funny, deeply human play about the corruption, comedy and compassion in us all.

Christie in Love
Christie in Love is inspired by the notorious British serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie, who murdered eight women, including his wife Ethel, in the 1940s and 50s. Born in Yorkshire, Christie served in the infantry in WWI and in the reserves in WWII, he worked as a police constable in between the wars. The bodies of Christie's victims were discovered in his Notting Hill flat by a subletter who moved in in 1953. Christie was hanged in July of that year.

Christie's Garden

Howard Brenton

Howard Brenton was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1942. His father was an amateur actor who first worked as a police constable and then left to become a Methodist minister. Brenton began writing plays while studying literature at Cambridge in the mid-1960's. He got the attention of a young director named David Hare, who took Brenton's first play after Cambridge - Christie in Love - to the Royal Court in 1969. 

In the nearly five decades of his career, Brenton has written over 50 plays, librettos, screenplays and books, including: Brassneck (1973), The Churchill Play (1974),Pravda (1985) for the National Theatre, the novel Diving for Pearls (1989), the popular BBC television series "Spooks" (2002-2005), and In Extremis (2006) and Ann Boleyn for the Globe Theatre. Brenton is known for his politically controversial re-examinations of history and his jarring juxtapositions of humor and seriousness.

"Scenes in my plays often vary in style - the principle is to write a scene in the way that dramatises its action best; if it comes out farcical, or as a serious argument, so be it."

-Howard Brenton

"Public life is a massive spectacle that everyone pretends to be a part of, but no one is... What do entertainments do but disrupt the spectacle?"

-Howard Brenton

Collage research

from designer Christopher Ash, inspired by Brenton's characteristic style of juxtaposition