Jan 06, 2017 |
New York City-based Aquila Theatre, celebrating its 25th anniversary season, will perform Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery “Murder on the Nile” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.
It is the fifth presentation of the 2016-17 Friends of Good Music season.
Christie is regarded as one of the great mystery writers in world literature, and this new production features a masterful whodunit and Aquila Theatre’s clever signature style.
“Murder on the Nile,” Christie’s own staging of her famous novel “Death on the Nile,” is set on a paddle steamer cruising Egypt’s legendary Nile River in the 1940s. The passengers are abuzz when famous heiress Kay Ridgeway and her penniless new husband, Simon Mostyn, board the ship.
Class, money and reputation are at stake in one way or another for the passengers, and before they know it, deceit, theft and murder make waves on the river. A host of colorful and mysterious characters, including spurned lover Jacqueline De Severac, protective uncle Canon Pennefather, and a troubled German doctor, add to the drama and suspense of this classic mystery.
Who can be trusted? Who holds the truth? Who is a suspect? Whodunit?
Aquila Theatre brings its innovative touch to this deliciously dangerous murder mystery, with what has been described as “brilliant direction, superb acting, thrilling physicality and stunning designs.”
Aquila’s production is set in the early 1940s during World War II at the BBC Home Service studios in London. Air raid sirens were a regular occurrence in London during this time as Great Britain was on constant alert to bombings by Germany. Members of the theater troupe have arrived and are preparing for a live radio broadcast of “Murder on the Nile.” Another air raid has prevented the full cast from assembling and yet, the show must go on, somehow.
This presentation is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Regrant program with support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and is administered by the Cattaraugus County Arts Council.
Tickets are $20 per person at full cost, $16 for senior citizens and St. Bonaventure staff, and $5 for students. For tickets and information, call The Quick Center at (716) 375-2494.
For each Friends of Good Music performance, The Quick Center will open its galleries one hour before the performance and keep them open throughout the intermission. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Museum admission is free and open to the public year round. For more information, visit
www.sbu.edu/quickcenter.
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