IT sounded promising, an Agatha Christie murder mystery for summertime in her old bolt-hole of Harrogate, especially with a company featuring Liza Goddard, Robert Duncan, Sophie Ward, Lysette Anthony and Gary Mavers.

Losing Liza Goddard from the touring cast for this week’s Harrogate performances for “personal reasons” was the first disappointment on arrival, but the play and performance were even more so, especially when Wednesday’s performance had drawn an expectant full house.

“It’s just that nothing very exciting is going on,” said one enervated voice at half time. Indeed there wasn’t. A bigger loss than Miss Goddard’s temporary unavailability was Agatha Christie’s decision to axe Hercule Poirot in her transition from 1942 novel, Five Little Pigs, to 1960 stage show.

Agatha Christie Company artistic director Joe Harmston’s slow touring production shifts the time settings forward to 1948 and 1968, mainly for the purposes of fashions in the Austin Powers movie mode, but the events at Alderbury, a house in the West of England, will not go down as among the highs of the Sixties.

The trouble is, the first half spins around the investigations of Sophie Ward’s drab Carla, who is determined to clear her mother’s name 20 years after Caroline Crale was convicted of the murder of her philandering artist husband, Amyas (Gary Mavers). The dialogue is dull, the structure repetitive.

Thankfully, when solicitor Justin Fogg (Ben Nealon) takes a stronger hand as narrator, the second half perks up into a whodunit. Ward has a far better second role as the wronged Caroline and Lysette Anthony has fun in a Joanna Lumley-style turn as posh artist’s muse Lady Elsa Greer, but your reviewer won’t be Going Back For Murder in a hurry.

Go Back For Murder, The Official Agatha Christie Theatre Company, Harrogate Theatre, tonight amd tomorrow at 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk