Review – Death on the Nile at Bath Royal Theatre

As an avid consumer of Agatha Christie’s writing, its safe to say that I have consumed pretty much all of the media on Death o the Nile. As any reader would know you have to read the book first before watching the movie, so as to know the original storyline. Whilst I loved the book, when I watched the movie I didn’t enjoy it as much (probably because they killed off my favourite character!) although visually it was amazing. 

The cast first started performing at the end of September this year and are suppose to continue until May 2026 performing in the UK and Ireland. I was very lucky to get a seat in the last performace in Bath! 

Would you travel down the River Nile when you know Hercule Poirot is joining?

When I first found out that the Bath Royal Theatre were showing this I was quite skeptical on how they would pull this set off as the plot was primarily set on a steamer. To my surprise it was done in a way that made it easy for the audience to understand where the characters were and effective in the way it seperated ‘rooms’. For me set is very important when I’m watching a show, as you could have the best actors but bad set and it wouldn’t draw me as an audience member into the show. I like to be able to fully immerse myself in the show and the believability of it. One aspect that I really enjoyed was the smoothness of the set changes, it almost looked like things where moving by themselves. There was a bed that was used to transport the ‘dead’ body which was moved around so smoothly that I almost forgot that it was just a piece of set. Overalll I think that the set was very ambitious and pulled of so well, that I can say it’s one of the best sets put on stage that was adapted from a book. It really transported me and made my feel like I was also travelling down the Nile with the characters. 

The costumes where amazing and relevant to the time that the book was set in. The actress who played Linnet, Libby Alexandra-Cooper, was first seen on stage in a glimmering dress. As it sparkled under the lighting it instanly drew the audience’s eye to her as you realised that she was an important character. The bold appearance was more impactful than I originally thought it was as you could practically see her chracters impact that she would have on the rest of the characters. 

Having already wtached a range of different actors play Hercule Poirot from David Suchet to John Malkovich I had quite high expectations of what the actor playing Poirot should be like. Mark Hadfield met those expectations head on. His performance as Poirot was so original and drew me in so much that I almost believed he was a Belgian detective. I was mostly impressed with how he kept up the accent throughout. I’ve tried just an American accent and that was hard! The rest of the cast also pulled off both the personalities and originality of the other characters, whilst having quite good working chemistry with each other which made the play even more enjoyable for me. 

However as always there are critics, this time my opinions on the plot. One of the bigger things for me was that it was altered from the novel. Whereas in the movie they killed my favourite character, in the play they didn’t have all of the murders. Now I do understand that performing it live is very different but I found it didn’t fully delve into the darkness and mystery that Christie normally has. I found that this was also reflected in the balance between humour and murder throughout the play. At some points it was a bit too light for the plot. Therefore it took away some of the suspense that I felt was due to really up the performance for the audience. Although I do think that quite a bit of this is due to me being very passionate about book adaptions!