‘We use stereotypes and then tear them apart'

British theatre director Melly Still talks about the need to reimagine Agatha Christie for an Indian audience

- KathaKali Chanda

British director-choreographer Melly Still was never a big fan of Agatha Christie in her youth till she was offered to direct a production of The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side. A re-reading of the crime fiction writer brought in new perspectives and she jumped on board to direct a production that was adapted for the stage by award-winning playwright Rachel Wagstaff(who has adapted Paula Hawkins’s The Girl On The Train, among others) and co-produced by the Wales Millennium Centre and Wiltshire Creative. Still is in Mumbai to direct another production of The Mirror Crack’d… recontextualized for an Indian audience by writer Ayeesha Menon. The play will be staged at the NCPA in Mumbai between January 30 and February 9. Still, who has previously directed adaptations of Louis de Bernières’s Captain Correlli’s Mandolin and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, gives Forbes India a peek into what to expect from the staging of Christie’s bestseller, this time set in a sleepy hamlet in Goa. Edited excerpts:

Q despite being set nearly half a century ago and produced multiple times for cinema and theatre what makes agatha Christie’s works interesting even now?