Agatha Christie’s rarely staged mystery Black Coffee will be performed in Prague on May 5 and 7 at Rock Café (Národní 116), and on May 17 at Divadlo D21 (Záhřebská 468).
All shows start at 20:00. Tickets are available here
The only play Christie wrote exclusively for the stage featuring Hercule Poirot, Black Coffee plunges audiences into a suspense-filled country estate, where manners are polished and motives are murky.
The story begins when a revolutionary scientific formula is stolen, and its creator, Sir Claude Amory, is found dead just before Poirot arrives. The detective must unravel the truth before the formula falls into the wrong hands.
Following the success of Murder on the Orient Express, The Mad and Merry Men theatre troupe brings this rarely performed gem back to life. Actor and producer Gordon L. Schmitz, reprising his role as Poirot, says the play reveals an earlier, less refined version of the detective. “Christie hadn’t yet pinned down all his characteristics,” Schmitz explains. “In one scene, he’s meant to use jiu-jitsu—which is wildly un-Poirot. We came up with a more elegant solution.”
Written in the late 1920s and first staged in 1930, Black Coffee even touches on atomic science long before the world knew the name Oppenheimer. “Christie envisioned the concept of an atom bomb before it existed,” Schmitz notes.
Actress Antoanella Ungureanu, who plays the elderly Caroline Amory, says the drama plays out like an emotional storm. “This secretive family is swept into events they can’t control,” she says. “They try to keep their composure—but their true feelings come out whether they like it or not.”
Playwright Zeke Rouse describes Black Coffee as “a proper adventure, full of secrets, scandal, and a suspicious amount of caffeine. Each performance feels like a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.”