Colombo, Monk, the Mentalist…they’d all be without a clue if not for Poirot.

Agatha Christie’s intrepid inspector was the model for the brilliant yet eccentric detectives of modern fiction.

The fastidious Belgian with the bowler hat and upturned mustache solved the murder in “The Mousetrap” and 32 other Agatha Christie novels.

The very first one, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” has been adapted for the stage and is being performed for free at 21  Northeast Ohio libraries, retirement homes, community centers, and schools, including Lake Ridge Academy in North Ridgeville.     

The student audience is challenged to sleuth out the real story as the tortuous plot unfolds. Captain Arthur Hastings is on a rest leave at Styles, the country manor of his friend John Cavendish, in the county Essex.  

It’s all very quaint and cosy with lots of friendly tennis games and chats over tea. Until Cavendish’s step-mother turns up dead.

She’d been poisoned. But whodunit?   Hercule Poirot is called in to figure it out. 

The role of Poirot is performed by playwright David Hansen, who adapted it from Agatha Christie’s first novel.  He had five actors and 200 pages to work with.   

 “Stripping that down to a 60-minute performance, I took some characters and condensed them and collapsed a couple characters into one. But I still had to leave enough characters for there to be enough suspects.”

Five actors play nine potential suspects on a wheeled-in stage. 

 “This beautiful set with two doors, which function like real doors that we can imagine is anyplace within Styles, the small country manor in Essex County without having to go anywhere else.  … The book does travel far afield, and we were able to keep it right here in the house.”  

Poirot uncovers the poisoning plot by sniffing out the clues. 

“Ah! Yes? Curious, is it? This coffee cup has been smashed to powder !”

The plot twists and turns, leaving most of the students in the audience …clueless.  

But freshman Berthee Fing claims she nailed them.

“Like in most crime shows, it’s the person you don’t expect it to be. So today I was looking for suspects that maybe weren’t that obvious. How did it turn out for you? Did you guess? Yeah. I switched back and forth a lot between who I thought did it and then in the end it all made sense.”   

Captain Hastings thought he had it figured out, too. 

 “Aha, Poirot congratulations!

“What?”

 “The poison was in the cocoa and not the coffee. “

“You think the cocoa contained strychnine.”

 “Yes. The salt on the tray, what else could it have been? “

“It might have been salt.”

Student audiences are the quickest to laugh at the funny parts according to

Director Lisa Ortenzi , who also heads Great Lakes Theater’s education department. 

 “We get to introduce a new novelist to them that maybe they normally wouldn’t read. And maybe they’ll go back after the show and pick up a book and try her out a little bit.”  

Sixteen-year-old Kelly Sullivan of Avon Lake is a junior at Lake Ridge Academy and  a musical theater major in its school of fine arts.

“I really liked it. I thought it was really clever the way they only had five actors in the whole production. There were so many costume changes. … Lots of quick changes back there and you could tell it was only like probably a couple seconds that they had to completely change characters. Did you know about Agatha Christie? No. I did not at all.”  

Playwright David Hansen relishes the role of Poirot as well as the chance to introduce him to new audiences.  

“We visit people who might not get then chance to come downtown, students who otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to come downtown. So it really is about providing a free, high quality, professional artistic experience to people within their own communities.”  

The touring company of “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” has two more performances: One this afternoon at the Cleveland sight center and the final one tomorrow afternoon at Quirk cultural center in Cuyahoga Falls.

Great Lakes Theater, now in its 50th season, opens “The Mousetrap” at the Hanna Friday night. It runs through March 25th.