Thus to Revisit by John James Rutherford

Thanks to Isseo Kato and The Guardian

Title: Thus to Revisit 

Author: John James Rutherford 

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn #16)

Our heroine, the weirdly named Martyn Tarn, takes a job as a dresser at The Vulcan theatre. Thus to Revisit, a new play by John James Rutherford, is opening soon, and Martyn will be dressing the leading lady, Helena Hamilton.

Dr Rutherford is described by his leading lady as ‘Our Greatest English Playright’, and that accolade seems to encourage him to throw his weight around, speak grandly in Shakespearian style language, and make difficulties with the casting of his play which is due to open in two days time. Rutherford has had two plays performed by this company, presumably (but outside the scope of the source book) successfully, but what about this one? 

Frankly, the more I read about Thus to Revisit, the more I know you would have to pay me (quite a lot) to go and see it.  Hands up who wants to see a play about a man who has been brought up on an island by a community of idealists: he represents the value of environment. He is transported to his original habitat where he encounters his own family (who seem pretty ghastly) and falls in love with his cousin’s wife. And our hero also encounters his cousin’s daughter, who is freakishly like him to look at but vicious and therefore represents his inescapable heredity.  Anyone fancy that? Not me.

Ngaio Marsh, being a great enthusiast for the theatre, has very odd ideas about what the public will find entertaining. Thus to Revisit, or Husbandry in Heaven and The Rat and the Beaver all sound less than a fun night out.

Anyway, can you guess who the murderer is? I have read this book at least three, maybe four times, but I never remember whodunnit. I also keep reading it because I can’t remember how little I enjoyed it the last time. This is partly because several of the characters are quite unpleasant and I really don’t care for them at all.

But there’s a huge clue. Who is Otto Brod? We don’t get to meet him, but yes, [spoilers] he’s the Austrian or Czech (not entirely sure which) who wrote the original play, in German, that Dr Rutherford completely steals and then adapts into Thus to Revisit. Seriously though, of all the plots of all the plays you ever heard of, would you really appropriate this?

OK, well stealing a play is a bad thing to do. Rutherford makes things not much better by claiming that he is of course going to write to Brod to explain his actions. But [spoilers] murdering people who find out what you’ve done, and probably plan to blackmail you, is extremely wrong.

In another source book by Ngaio Marsh, Swing Brother Swing, there’s a play (probably) called Fewer and Dearer. It’s featured in a magazine, Harmony, for which Edward Manx writes theatre reviews. We don’t learn anything about it except that Lady Dartmoor and Mr Jeremy Thringle are pictured enjoying a joke at the opening night. I didn’t reckon this merited a separate post.

Thanks to Sara Wunderlich and Birds and Blooms