Cast members in Theatre Baton Rouge’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ are, from left, Tara Nixon as Princess Dragomiroff, Landon Corbin as Monsieur Bouc, Greta Ohlsson as Mak Secrest, Vince LiCata as Hercule Poirot, Adam Vedros as Head Waiter, Sarah Short as Countess Andrenyi, Michael Muffuletto as Hector MacQueen, Jennifer Ellis as Mrs. Helen Hubbard, Andrew Scruggs as Colonel Arbuthnot, Madisen Kelly as Mary Debenham and Kenneth Mayfield as Samuel Ratchett.
For Theatre Baton Rouge, staging Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express” is a chance to give its capital city audiences a taste of Hollywood.
For director Jason Breaux, it’s a chance to show Baton Rouge who Ken Ludwig is and what his writing is all about.
What’s the big deal about Ludwig?
His plays and adaptations have a way of making audiences smile, even laugh, in the midst of the most serious of stories. “Murder on the Orient Express,” opening Friday on the Main Stage, is one of those stories, considered to be both Agatha Christie’s masterpiece and her darkest whodunit.
But when talk of staging her story began circulating, Christie’s estate specifically asked Ludwig to adapt it.
“They didn’t want to have a dour, serious play version of it, Breaux said. “And so Ken Ludwig, who is known for his farces and comedies, didn’t change the show completely into a comedy, but added a little bit of a pep to the step of the murder mystery. It definitely flows a lot faster than the movie version of it, and we have tried to add some humorous elements, especially on the front end to make that journey a little bit more palatable as we get into the darker parts of the story toward the end.”
Why not? People are people, even in Christie’s mysteries, and not everyone is serious all the time. Even Monsieur Bouc has his humorous moments when Landon Corbin plays him.
Vince LiCata is Hercule Poirot in Theatre Baton Rouge’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’
“He’s a Belgian businessman and director of the La Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which runs the greatest train company in the world, the Orient Express,” Corbin said. “It’s the company’s crown jewel, and Bouc has made a career of showing it off to people.”
Bouc also acts as sidekick to detective Hercule Poirot, played by Vince LiCata, when there’s a murder. This is when Bouc’s true personality shines through.
“I’ve seen Bouc played as a playboy, and I’ve seen him played to where he is arrogant,” Corbin said. “That’s not my take at all. He is a businessman, but he’s a little bit goofy, you know? And he’s very energetic, the life of the room. He’s very much a showman, and he’s always trying to sort of put on a performance for his customers. And he wants to at all times make sure that everyone is enjoying themselves, and he’ll, he’ll bend over backwards to make sure that’s the case.”
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