Witness For The Prosecution

by Agatha Christie

Sutton Arts Theatre, directed by Dexter Whitehead

Thursday 18th September 2025

“Witness for the Prosecution” started life as an Agatha Christie short story in 1925, which the “Queen of Crime” herself adapted into a stage play that was first performed in 1953. There was also a 1957 film version, which sometimes still does the rounds on channels such as Talking Pictures TV.

Broken down to its simplest, the plot is quite basic – man accused of murder protests his innocence and his defence lawyer attempts to convince the jury. But, this is a Christie so nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears!

This is quite a static piece, in that the bulk of the action takes place in the court room in which almost all of the moments is one of the baristers stepping up to question the witnesses. It therefore relies on strong performances from those two actors, with the supporting ensemble obviously making their contributions accordingly.

We had a single set for the most part, dominated by the raised Judge’s platform at the back. On stage right was a row of two benches where the jury were placed – in this case the jury being members of the audience. Down left was the façade of what appeared to be an old fashioned pub, which looked very good bearing in mind that until late in the play it’s not clear why it’s there. In front of this was a lamppost and a bicycle, neither or which were relevant to the plot but added a nice bit of window dressing.

For the courtroom scenes, the barristers were actually sat in the front row of the audience, with the dock just in front of them centre stage, meaning it didn’t have to keeping being brought on and off between scenes.

Scenes outside the court room were played at the front of the stage, allowing for a disconnect and this space was used well for the scenes in Robarts’s office and in front of the aforementioned pub. Such scene changes that there were were handled quickly and efficiently.

There wasn’t a huge amount of sound or lighting effects in this production, but whenever used, they were very effective.

Several entrances were used so the cast could come in and out without any bottlenecks and the advantage of the court room setting was that a lot of the actors were coming in and out one at a time.

There was also good use of the auditorium as an extra entrance as and when necessary.

The interaction between the cast members was very well done, I don’t recall hearing much in the way of prompts so that the action (for want of a better word) could proceed at the required pace. We had clarity from them and despite some of the dialogue being delivered upstage, we never lost any of it.

There was a bit of blocking during the scenes in the solicitor’s office, for which I’d probably have suggested changing the angle of the bench they were sat on but this didn’t detract from the performances.

The bulk of the dialogue in the courtroom scenes is, as you’d expect, delivered by the opposing counsels and here we had two marvellous performances from Dan Payne as the aforementioned defence counsel Sir Wilfred Robarts and Alan Groucoutt as the prosecution council Mr Myers. The to-ing and fro-ing between the characters as they alternately questioned witnesses was a joy and kept the plot moving tremendously.

Kieran Jenkins gave us a good performance in the role of the accused, Leonard Vole, giving us an excellent portrayal of someone who believes he has been wronged and to a certain extent he did come over as the naïve innocent, with this being flipped on its head when we come to the twist at the end.

Laura Hinton in the role of Romaine, Leonard’s wife (or not as the case may be) showed us her talent for accents, mainly the German of the character with a bit of Cockney thrown in as the script demanded. This was a good portrayal of someone whose motives we are never truly short of.

Speaking of accents, Liz Berriman gave us a splendid Scottish portrayal of the victim’s housekeeper Janet McKenzie, which brought to mind another Janet, namely the housekeeper from “Dr Finley’s Casebook” (some of you may have to ask your parents about that one). A solid performance as someone clearly devoted to her friend and employer.

The defence team of Mayhew and Carter were nicely contrasting roles played by Patrick Rayson and Connor Taylor, both fulfilling their supporting roles well.

Andrew Tomlinson was holding the court scenes together in the role of the judge, Mr Justice Wainwright and we had a delightful cameo performance from Kayleigh Alison as the ditsy Greta, secretary to the aforementioned solicitors’ team.

A lot of the roles were just on stage for a few minutes as witnesses giving their evidence, but each and every one gave us a believable portrayal and left the audience in no doubt as to their role within the proceedings.

Overall, everyone involved in this production can be proud in achieving what they did and doing full justice to the storyline. Even though I’d seen another production of this play only last summer, I was so absorbed and drawn into it that I was still surprised by the twist at the end!

To sum up, all all round excellent show.

Reviewed by David G.