HARROGATE playwright and actress Rachael Halliwell’s new 40-minute work Room 253 was performed as a staged radio play, “taking you into the mind of one of the greatest ever crime writers”.

Introduced by a dapper radio announcer as if it were being broadcast live from a Harrogate recording studio, it played out as a psychological period drama going on inside Agatha’s head, after she takes the train north to the Harrogate Hydro, having abandoned her car near Guildford and set a national manhunt in motion.

Booking into Room 253 on December 4 1926 under the pseudonym of Mrs Neele and in disguise, Agatha (played by Miss Rachael Halliwell, as the announcer called her) outwardly acts “the ordinary guest”, joining in tea dances, partaking of afternoon tea and chatting with fellow guests. However, her encounters with myriad characters affirm the novelist’s state of mind is troubled.

The newspapers called it the “most complete loss of memory”, but in piecing together the real-life clues, Halliwell suggested more of a mental breakdown with a blurring of reality and imagination.

The style of performance was visually stilted, as cast members in Twenties costume stepped forward to read lines in character but without fully interacting (such is the nature of a radio performance). The intention was to throw the focus on Christie’s fevered mind, the drama lying in the voice, but the play consequently fell between stools as the stage space in Tom Collinson’s production became merely linear and flat.

Stage manager and foley artist James Dennan added a visual dimension with his live sound effects, but ultimately the mystery of Mrs Christie’s 11-day disappearance was not as intriguing as it should have been.