POIROT AND MORE, A RETROSPECTIVE

Co-created by David Suchet and Liza McLean

Tue 05 Oct 2021 - Fri 08 Oct 2021

Sir David Suchet makes his eagerly awaited return to UK stages with POIROT AND MORE, A RETROSPECTIVE which will receive its UK debut at The Watermill Theatre. Sir David performed at The Watermill early in his career and is a long-standing supporter and patron of the theatre.

We invite audiences to experience a rare opportunity with one of the world’s most celebrated and fascinating actors of our time.

Join us in conversation with the man, the actor and his many roles in an unmistakably unique event. A retrospective look at David’s career will have you witness some of his most beloved performances in a new and intimate light.

For over 25 years he captivated millions worldwide as Agatha Christie’s elegant Belgian detective. Beyond Poirot, this Emmy award winning actor has been celebrated for his portrayal of iconic roles such as Lady Bracknell, Cardinal Benelli and Freud. David has also graced the world’s stages bringing literary greats to life, including Shakespeare, Wilde and Albee.

Meet the actor behind the detective and the many faces he’s portrayed on stage and screen over a career spanning five decades. Discover why David Suchet is renowned for not only becoming the role, but also taking on the personalities of some of television, film and theatre’s most fascinating characters.

POIROT AND MORE, A RETROSPECTIVE comes to The Watermill Theatre for a strictly limited engagement.

Take your seat at this once-in-a-lifetime event, as we go behind the screen and curtain with a legend.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including a 20 minute interval

Co-created by David Suchet and Liza McLean

Interviewer Geoffrey Wansell

Originally produced in Australia and New Zealand by Liza McLean and Andrew Kay. Presented in the UK by Liza McLean, Andrew Kay and Jonathan Church Theatre Productions.

David Suchet

David is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a Member of the Fight Directors Association of Great Britain.

FILM

American Assassin, Effie, The Bank Job , Act of God, Foolproof, The In-Laws, Live From Baghdad, Sabotage, Wing Commander, A Perfect Murder, Sunday, Deadly Voyage, Executive Decision, The Lucona Affair, Big Foot and the Hendersons, When the Whales Came, Iron Eagle, Gulag, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Song for Europe (Channel 4 - Best Actor Award, RTS Awards), Falcon and the Snowman, The Last Innocent Man (HBO - Best Actor, Ace Awards), Red Monarch (Channel 4 - Best Actor Award, Marseilles Film Festival) and A World Apart (Working Title - Best Actor Nomination, BAFTA).

THEATRE

The Price (West End) Pinter Season – The Collection (West End), The Importance Of Being Earnest (Vaudeville Theatre), The Last Confession (World Tour), Long Day's Journey Into Night (Apollo Theatre), All My Sons (Apollo Theatre), Complicit (The Old Vic), The Last Confession (West End and Chichester Festival Theatre), Once in A Lifetime (Royal National Theatre), Man and Boy (West End and No. 1 Tour), The Play What I wrote (West End), Amadeus (West End, London and Broadway), Saturday, Sunday, Monday (Chichester Festival Theatre), George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Aldwych Theatre (won Critic's Circle Award, nominated for Best Actor Evening Standard and Olivier Awards), What a Performance (Plymouth Theatre Royal and Queens Theatre), Oleanna (Royal Court and Duke of York's - Best Actor, Royal Variety Club), Timon of Athens (Young Vic - Best Actor, Evening Standard Awards) and Separation (Hampstead Theatre and Comedy Theatre - Olivier nomination for Best Actor). David has also acted extensively in the Regional Theatres including Liverpool, Birmingham, Chester, Exeter, Edinburgh Festival, Chichester Festival. An Associate Artist of The Royal Shakespeare Company he has played Iago in Othello, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Caliban in The Tempest, Bolingbroke in Richard II, Angelo in Measure for Measure (all nominated for Olivier Best Actor Awards).

TELEVISION

His Dark Materials (BBC One), Press (BBC One), Capitaine Marleau and Sang et Lumiere (Canal+), Urban Myths: The Dali & The Cooper (Sky Arts), Peter Pan Goes Wrong (BBC), Doctor Who (BBC), Decline & Fall (BBC), Agatha Christie's Poirot (ITV Productions), Great Expectations (BBC 2), Richard II (BBC 2), Hidden (Origin Pictures/BBC One), Going Postal (Sky), Agatha Christie's Poirot (ITV Productions), Diverted (TV film Shaftesbury Films/Big Tree Productions), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (ITV Productions), Maxwell (BBC TV), Dracula (BBC TV), Flood (Power), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Granada TV/A & E Television Networks), A Bear Named Winnie (Powercorp Prods.), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Granada TV/A & E Television Networks), Henry VIII (Granada TV), George Carmen QC (BBC), NCS: The Series (BBC), The Way We Live Now (BBC), Murder In Mind - ‘Teacher’ (BBC), NCS: Manhunt (BBC), Victoria & Albert (BBC & A& E), Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Carnival Films in association with A&E Television Networks), RKO281 (HBO), Seesaw (LWT), Solomon (Lux & TNT USA), Moses (Lux & TNT USA), Secret Agent (BBC), Agatha Christie's Poirot (LWT - Best Actor nomination, BAFTA), Separation (BBC), Bingo (BBC), Once in a Lifetime (BBC), Cause Celebre (Anglia), Ulysees (LWT), Playing Shakespeare (LWT), Blott on the Landscape (BBC – Best Actor, BAFTA), The Life of Freud (BBC - Best Actor, RTS Awards) and The Muse (BBC).

RADIO

The Kreutzer Sonata (Best Actor Award), Never Been Kissed in the Same Place Twice, Ironhand, First Night Impressions, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Debussy, Gorky on Tolstoy/Gorky on Chekhov, Wilkie Collins - Rich Pickings, The Shout, Rosenberg in the Trenches, Life of Chekhov and most recently the composer William Byrde in To Preserve the Health of Man (BBC Radio 3).

Geoffrey Wansell

Geoffrey Wansell is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist.

Together with David Suchet, he wrote the best-selling book Poirot and Me in 2013, which has been published around the world.

They met on the set of the 20th Century Fox film, When the Whales Came, based on a Michael Murpurgo story, in which he served as executive producer and David appeared alongside Paul Scofield and Helen Mirren in 1988. They have been friends ever since.

Geoffrey is also an expert in true crime. The presenter of 28 episodes of his own one-hour television series Murder By The Sea for CBS Reality, he has also made more than 120 hours of television documentaries for Sky, the World’s Most Evil Killers and Britain’s Most Evil Killers, as well as many other crime documentaries for ITV, Channel Four and Channel Five.

His latest book, Pure Evil, about those British murderers given whole life sentences, is published in paperback by Penguin, and he was the authorised biographer of the Gloucester serial killer Frederick West, as well as the biographer of Levi Bellfield, the man who killed Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Together with his daughter Molly, Geoffrey also has a weekly true crime podcast, Blood Ties, which has been running successfully for the past four years and is rapidly expanding its audience. Each episode deals with a specific crime, whether in Britain, America or around the world.

He has been the crime and thriller reviewer for the Daily Mail for the past decade, and before that was one of the paper’s leading feature writers. In a career spanning more than five decades in journalism he has also worked for The Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph Magazine among many others.

Geoffrey’s biography of the playwright Terence Rattigan was short-listed for the Whitbread Book of the Year award, and was published in both Britain and the United States, as were his biographies of the British-born Hollywood star Cary Grant and James Goldsmith.

A life member of The Garrick Club in London, of which both he and David are Trustees, Geoffrey is also the Club’s official historian, and speaks regularly about the Club’s 190 year history and its many eminent members, including Charles Dickens, A. A. Milne, Noel Coward and Sir Laurence Olivier.