IMPRESARIO Bill Kenwright has always had an eye for an opportunity and he shows canny judgement again in mounting a tour of Black Coffee after the final curtain fell on David Suchet’s Hercule Poirot on ITV after 25 years.

Agatha Christie wrote only one play for her fastidious Belgian detective, Black Coffee in 1930, and jettisoned him from stage adaptations of her other works on the grounds that he was, in essence, too difficult to portray.

Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov and Suchet have subsequently proved the Queen of Crime wrong, and now you can add Robert Powell to that list, as Poirot makes an impeccable return to the stage in the Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s high-quality revival of Black Coffee, whose darkness and kick is far superior to that of Christie’s best-known stage play, The Mousetrap.

That said, last May’s sold-out Opera House run of The Mousetrap’s Diamond Anniversary touring production – the first outside London in 60 years – unquestionably has whetted Agatha appetites for Black Coffee, and director Joe Harmston, designer Simon Scullion and costume designer Nikki Bird are all in piping hot form, just as Black Coffee should be served.

Scullion sets Christie’s beautifully constructed murder mystery in the art deco drawing-room splendour of the English country estate of eccentric Sir Claud Amory (Eric Carte), a place the looks so airy and comfortable, or it would be if he hadn’t locked the door to the garden beyond and called all the household together after dinner to determine who has stolen the priceless formula to his latest very explosive invention.

Gathered together are the dark, edgy, mysterious and suspiciously unhappy Lucia (Olivia Mace), Italian wife of Sir Claud’s impatient son Richard (Ben Nealon); ever-perky and pukka maiden aunt Miss Caroline Amory (Liza Goddard); dishy flapper-girl niece Barbara (Felicity Houlbrooke); and cadaverous personal secretary Edward Raynor (Mark Jackson).

Wholly above suspicion is Tredwell, the butler; wholly in the spotlight is interloping Italian Dr Carelli (Gary Mavers), who must be suspect number one because, well, he’s foreign with a slightly dodgy accent to match.

Sir Claud – one of those old boys who says “orf” rather than “off” – will never discover the miscreant because his black coffee is so “bitter” that it kills him, but not before he had summoned Hercule Poiot in advance to track down the missing formula.

Powell’s meticulous, measured Poirot finds himself conducting a murder inquiry instead, aided by the ever-so old-fashioned Captain Hastings (Robin MCallum) and less so by the rather brash methods of Inspector Japp (Carte again).

Powell pulls the strings with the grace and subtlety of a ballerina puppeteer with a delicious twist of humour too, humour that Harmston’s direction delivers elsewhere, such as when Goddard’s Caroline keeps dropping her ball of wool as a harassed Carelli tries to usher her from the room.

Divided into three acts of just the right length to build up maximum intrigue, Black Coffee is a supreme piece of vintage theatre as polished as a butler’s shoes.

Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee, The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm today and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york