IT’S ALL FUN and games, until the moustached man comes to speculate with his ‘leetle grey cells’. The delightfully entertaining sequence of events in Agatha Christie’s murder stories hits the mark every time. A room full of acquaintances, each secretly grinding an axe toward the bloke who lands up dead. Enter the detective and after a few moments of investigation, some awkward moments for guilty parties and the murderer is known! And it is never the one you suspect. Under Alan Swerdlow’s direction and with Alan Committie under the Poirot-esque moustache, Black Coffee at the Pieter Toerien theatre is one of those unequivocal must-sees.

And everything, from a complete colour wheel of the world’s deadliest poisons whipped down from a shelf-top, to the ugly toby jug in the room where the shenanigans take place, to the sub-plot of the secret plans for an atomic bomb, and the secrets in the closets and histories of innocent-looking characters, not to forget the Edwardian costumes, pin curls and styles of social modesty, is perfectly handled. This is a well-made play at its very best.

Oddly, in a theatrical version of Agatha Christie – as opposed to the story on the page or screen – your relationship with the characters is more remote. There is less time to establish the personal idiosyncrasies of each player and less ability to see them up close and personally. But this doesn’t bruise the narrative. Christie’s writing is so acute and astute in her character definitions that in a few words she can sum up the frailties and flaws of an otherwise perfectly looking human being.

The distance and condensed time that you experience in watching Agatha Christie onstage is as much about the hairpin bends necessary in the whodunnit genre as it is about directorial wisdom, enabling you, in the audience, to be second guessing the morals and slyness of every single cast member – except, of course, the guilty one, who crosses your mind as a ‘definitely impossible candidate’ for said noose.

The cast is delicious – from the youngest member, Jackie Lulu as the young bride with a penchant to be away from the dinner table to Peter Terry, Sir Claud Amory himself, the rich host of the tragic party. Terry also plays Inspector Japp and you’d be hard pressed to realise this at the outset. The change of accent and demeanour in the performer is so powerful, it makes you sit up and look. It’s also a joy to see veteran performers, Anne Williams, Dianne Simpson and Michael Richard reprise key roles, much as you would anticipate the likes of Bette Davis, Maggie Smith and Simon Callow, in the kind of unforgettable cameos that makes works of this nature sing.

But then, there is Alan Committie. With a nod in the direction of both David Suchet and Peter Ustinov, the screen’s most beloved Hercule Poirots, Committie makes this larger than life detective his own, and he gives the narrative the perfect tone of earnest and off-beat sparkle to make the play burst into your sensibilities in all the right ways. With his Belgian anglicisms which work with and bruise the English niceties, and his wisdom when it comes to the spiteful failings of folk, Poirot’s your man, and Committie brings him to beautiful life. Even that moustache deserves a listing on the credits.

This is a play that allows you to enjoy murder most horrid with gratuitous delight. It’s escapist crime at its very crispy best. Just make sure you know your barista.

Black Coffee is written by Agatha Christie and directed by Alan Swerdlow. Performed by Alan Committie, Ashley Dowds, Mike Huff, Brett Krüger, Jackie Lulu, Michael Richard, Dianne Simpson, Schoeman Smit, Peter Terry and Anne Williams, it features design by Sarah Roberts (production);  Denis Hutchinson (lighting); Adam Howard (sound); and Alistair Pringle (hair pieces), with set construction by Nadine Minnaar. It is produced by Pieter Toerien and is onstage at the Pieter Toerien Theatre, Montecasino complex in Fourways until 8 June 2025.