Elihu Entertainment

Having recently had another enquiry about Casting for Murder, which premiered with the Vagabond Players in 2000 and was most recently produced by the Thorold Community Theatre in 2023, it made me realize how lucky I am to have a play that keeps making the rounds, especially since it had quite a rough beginning when I attempted to adapt my short story, “To Catch an Actress” into a stage production. My husband had thought the story would make a good play, and I decided to rise to the challenge. I had written several scripts for marionette shows, so thought writing for the theatre shouldn’t be that much more complicated. However, the project proved much more difficult than I thought.

The original short story is set in an actress’s apartment in Vancouver. It is told from the point of view of the actress, and the plot revolves around four characters. Once I began to consider a script, I realized that there were not enough characters to make a traditional murder-mystery play, so unless I wanted to write the piece as a Sleuth-style character study, I had to add to the cast list. I also realized that the setting was another obstacle—both for time and place. The murder takes place long before the story begins and in a different location from the story setting. Furthermore, part of the investigation has already taken place. In other words, I had a story that had no real action and was merely a conversation between three people. Since a play depends on the audience seeing some action on stage, it didn’t take me long to realize that an entirely different approach was needed.

Once I accepted that the setting had to be changed and the cast of characters increased, I realized that I could also add new action to make the play more interesting. Basically, I needed extra murders and a more mysterious location than a downtown apartment. At the time I was preparing to write, we were vacationing in Pender Harbour. We were doing a lot of boating up and down the coast and seeing the exclusive homes on privately owned islands.

That holiday gave me my setting: a privately owned island off the Sunshine Coast, where, in traditional whodunit style, my characters could be stranded due to a storm. Having made that decision, the play started to ripple off my fingers. The first two acts flew by, but then I became stuck again. The third act was torture to write, and I probably revised it ten times before I finished. The trouble I had with Act Three also forced me to go back and make revisions to the earlier acts.

The reason it is so hard to write the final act of a mystery play is simple. Audiences expect their mysteries to be neatly wrapped up with all loose ends explained, but they do not want to be bored by lengthy sections of exposition. Therefore, in order to ensure people are satisfied with the ending, but not stultified by a mass of anticlimactic dialogue, you need to front load as much information as possible prior to the climax, and leave only minimal details to be revealed in the final act. You need to slip pertinent detail into many different dialogues and action sequences, and assign these to a variety of characters. This serves two purposes: less chance for the audience becoming bored and more equal distribution of lines for the actors. It’s also best if you can slip information into action sequences that seem unrelated to the mystery—sort of a visual red herring—thus the audience may be distracted by the action and miss the clues.

Ultimately, I finished the script, but when the play was first produced in 2000, I quickly discovered that more revisions were needed. The dialogue had to be further simplified and many more cuts were made. As the director and I whittled the script down until only essential material remained, the play become more streamlined. In hindsight, I would probably have cut even more from the script. However, the play does seem to work, and has had many productions in various parts of Canada, plus one in the United States, so it has certainly done well.

What did I learn that I later applied to future plays? There was one outstanding lesson that all mystery playwrights need to know. Never have a murder on stage unless it’s at the end of an act. Otherwise the director will have an impossible time knowing what to do with the body. Dwayne Campbell, who so ably directed the first production of Casting for Murder, came to me after a blocking rehearsal and pointed out that the final murder would have to take place off stage. He told me that they’d tried everything, including having the corpse die behind the sofa, but even then, there were feet pointing out like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. The end result had been a great deal of hilarity and the realization that my play would rapidly turn from mystery into comedy. Needless to say, we rewrote in a hurry, and I’ve never made that mistake again.

The other significant lesson for me was never to write another three-act play. These days, people do not seem as willing to spend long and leisurely evenings in the theatre, and shorter is considered more desirable by play-reading committees. I personally hate the way companies compress three-act plays and operas into two acts, and would far prefer to have the additional intermission. However, this is the trend of the times. I have seen Casting for Murder performed both ways, and there’s no doubt that it works far better in the three-act format. Scarborough did an excellent three-act production, but most companies squeeze the play into two acts. My advice to playwrights is: if you want your play performed the way you wrote it, stick to the two-act format. It’s by far the most popular with theatre groups.

And the final lesson I learned? It’s a lot easier writing a play from scratch than trying to adapt a story to the stage. If I tried such an adaption again, I would simply list the key characters, make a timeline of the plot, pick out the one most significant event, and then build the play about that and forget everything else in the story. Still, creating Casting for Murder  was a great writing exercise and it continues to roll on, so I guess I did something right!

On Remembrance Day, I have many people to remember, not only family members who served in the armed forces, but also a number of wonderful friends, long since passed on, that I knew during my years as a volunteer at the George Derby War Veterans’ hospital.  However, the one that always comes first to mind is Charles Field, the grandfather I never met, and with him, Emma Field, the grandmother he left behind.

Charles Field was the batman to Captain Hanbury, a member of the family who had started the Allen & Hanbury pharmaceutical company.  The story, as my mother told it, was that the two became good friends, and that the captain always told Charlie that if they both came through, he would see him right after the war.  The two men survived together throughout the four years of the War.  However, during the final Allied offensive in November 1918, both were fatally shot by a sniper towards the end of the battle.

My grandmother, Emma Field, or Pem, as the family called her, was deeply grieved over the loss of her Charlie, who was reputed to be a real sweetheart, but like most war widows, she had to struggle on alone.  She got a job in a factory, and my mother and uncle became latchkey children.  She was also the oldest of five children herself, and in spite of her widowhood, ended up assuming responsibility for helping her siblings and caring for elderly parents.

Many years and another World War later, my Nan continued to support the family.  My father, who was in the Merchant Navy, married my mother in 1943, so they lived with Nan throughout the war.  When my mother was expecting my brother, she complained that she had not known what was more dangerous:  Hitler’s bombs or Nan hurling her under the table whenever the sirens went off.   My mother also used to relish the tale of how Nan had kept an ‘emergency’ bottle of brandy all through the war, refusing all requests from those who wanted to sample it, only to have it stolen by a burglar who broke in after it was all over.

Our family continued to live with Nan after the war, a situation she had not invited, but had simply put up with in order to help my parents.  I remember her as a rather formidable lady who liked her Guinness, had strict rules about not annoying her in her rooms, but who also took my brother and myself on lots of interesting outings.   Then, in 1957, my father whisked us away to Canada, and she lost the company of her only grandchildren, though she continued to send us our British comics and write to us during the remainder of her life.

It was only after I’d grown up that I started to appreciate how much heartache she had endured, and how tough she was to maintain her resilient get-on-with-it spirit, no matter what was happening around her.  Needless to say, I was delighted when a few years ago, an aunt passed on to me copies of a batch of letters that had been written by ‘Pem’ to her cousin in Australia.   I was especially fascinated to see that one of these was dated 1941.  Some of this is printed below:  It’s a picture of Wartime England from the middle-aged widow’s perspective.  Sorry I never got to meet you, Charlie Field, but you’d have been proud of the lady you left behind.

March 22, 1941

Dear Alf,

Received your letter today…….  I thought perhaps the mail had gone down.  As you know, Mum passed away the 12^th of June.  She had been very ill all winter.  In fact every winter for the last six years she had to stay in her room because of her chest, but the September war was declared, on that same night we had an air raid warning.  We thought we were going to be deluged with bombs, and she never really got over the shock.  . . . .   On Oct. 25^th she had a stroke. 

I nursed her for six months, and she seemed to be getting on nicely.  Then the posters started about the possible invasion, and the doctor advised me to try and get her away.  If it happened, she would not stand the strain.  Her friend Mrs. Coburn had moved from Highbury to Ealing, so I took her there while I looked for a house; I had just got this house and was going up to see her when I had the wire asking me to come.  But she did not know me.  She is buried with Dad at Sutton.   Perhaps it is as well she was taken before things got as bad as they are.  You say the Londoners can take it.  You ought to see what they have taken.  Do you remember where Rose lived?  It is dreadful round there.  Windsor Street’s small houses, not one is standing.  The turning is like a waste land.  Dean Street . . . not a soul is living there.  The homes just smashed up.  In one turning, there are five pianos or parts of them in the debris of the different homes.  Hitler’s military objective, Highbury, got it dreadful this week.  It is appalling the women and children that have been killed.  Also the city has been badly bombed, in some parts just ruins. . . . .  Do you remember the London Hotel at the corner of Tylers Avenue.  That was hit the other week and a lot of civilians killed. 

My daughter does nursing all night once a week in a shelter in the city.  I do fire watching once a week.  I have a tin hat and a whistle to blow should an incendiary bomb drop in our turning.  We do different turns all through the night starting at 10 pm until 6 am.  . . . . . . . One thing we have to be thankful for is that we have not been really short of food.  We don’t get a lot of meat, but the fat ration is very generous really.  We have plenty of veg, bread and flour and if people spend a bit more time at their stoves, they can make some real good meals.  It means a little more trouble but it is worth it and all helps to win the war, besides helping to keep the nation fit. . . . .   

Rents went up very high after the last war, but food and clothes got very reasonable the last ten years.  Now we are at war again and everything is sky high again, but why worry?  Just live from day to day, get what pleasure you can, and try to be just to all.  I hope this reaches you.  Wishing you and yours all the best.

Pem.