The Mousetrap and Other Plays

Appointment with Death

Produced at the Piccadilly Theatre, London, on 31st March 1945, with the following cast of characters:

(in the order of their appearance)

MRS. BOYNTON

Mary Clare

GINEVRA BOYNTON, her stepdaughter

Deryn Kerbey

LENNOX BOYNTON, her elder stepson

Ian Lubbock

NADINE BOYNTON, Lennox’s wife

Beryl Machin

LIFT BOY

John Glennon

ALDERMAN HIGGS

Percy Walsh

Anthony Dorset

LADY WESTHOLME

Janet Burnell

MISS PRYCE

Joan Hickson

DR. GERARD

Gerard Hinze

SARAH KING

Carla Lehmann

JEFFERSON COPE

Alan Sedgwick

RAYMOND BOYNTON,

Lennox’s younger brother

John Wynn

DRAGOMAN

Harold Berens

COLONEL CARBERY

Owen Reynolds

LADY VISITOR

Cherry Herbert

HOTEL VISITORS

The play directed by Terence de Marney

SYNOPSIS OF SCENES

ACT I

The lounge of the King Solomon Hotel, Jerusalem. Afternoon

ACT II

SCENE 1 The Travellers’ Camp at Petra. Early afternoon. A week later

SCENE 2 The same. Three hours later

ACT III

SCENE 1 The same. The following morning

SCENE 2 The same. The same afternoon

Time: the present

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The effect of the lift ascending and descending can be easily obtained by having a gauze window in the lift door, behind which is a shutter which can be raised as the lift descends and lowered as the lift ascends. There should be a domed light which is always alight, suspended in the lift in sight of the audience.

Characters should wear semitropical clothes suitable to character and nationality. It will be found effective if all characters wear costume light in colour, except MRS. BOYNTON, who should dress throughout in unrelieved black. The Hotel CLERK wears a grey frock coat and tarboosh. The DRAGOMAN wears a white Arab dress and red tarboosh in the hotel, but changes into brown garments for the camp scenes, as also does the ARAB BOY. COLONEL CARBERY wears the khaki uniform of the Palestine Police, i.e. tunic and shorts with a blue service peaked cap.