The Hollow tour casts its Hercule Poirot and announces new dates

Exclusive: A new stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow has revealed its lead casting and extra tour dates.

The production is brought to the stage by producers Fiery Angel and director Lucy Bailey, the team behind tours of And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile. This new version, which will tour the UK and Ireland, is by Tamsin Oglesby.

It again follows Hercule Poirot, who is drawn into an unsettling case while attempting to take a break at a country estate where a glamorous circle of guests gathers.

WhatsOnStage Award and two-time Olivier Award nominee Peter Polycarpou will play the legendary Belgian detective. Further casting is to be revealed.

The Hollow will open at Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, on 9 October before touring nationwide into 2027. The tour will visit Hall for Cornwall, Truro (20 to 24 October), Richmond Theatre (27 to 31 October), Grand Opera House, Belfast (3 to 7 November), Newcastle Theatre Royal (10 to 14 November), New Theatre Cardiff (17 to 21 November), Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (24 to 28 November).

Into the new year the show will visit Birmingham Alexandra (12 to 16 January), Milton Keynes Theatre (19 to 23 January), Nottingham Theatre Royal (26 to 30 January), Theatre Royal Brighton (2 to 6 February), Edinburgh Festival Theatre (9 to 13 February), His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen (23 to 27 February), Cheltenham Everyman Theatre (2 to 6 March), Malvern Theatre (16 to 20 March), Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre (23 to 27 March), Bath Theatre Royal (30 March to 3 April), Theatre Royal Plymouth (13 to 17 April), Lowry (20 to 24 April), Leeds Playhouse (27 April to 1 May), Norwich Theatre Royal (4 to 8 May), Gaiety Theatre, Dublin (11 to 15 May), York Grand Opera House (18 to 22 May) and Glasgow Theatre Royal (25 to 29 May).

This is Bailey’s fifth time directing Christie’s classic thrillers, and she says The Hollow is one of her most powerful: “At first glance it appears to be a classic country-house mystery, but it’s something far richer, a portrait of a family clinging to a fading world, caught between nostalgia and the unsettling pull of the future. Christie gathers a circle of brilliantly drawn characters to an English country estate and lets comedy, melancholy and long-buried family tensions simmer until a sudden act of violence shatters the illusion of civility.”

She continues: “At the centre is Henrietta, a strikingly modern artist, fiercely independent and watching the emotional chaos around her. When the unthinkable happens, it falls to the incomparable Hercule Poirot to unravel the truth. It’s a story about people trapped between the lives they have and the lives they long for. That tension makes The Hollow feel startlingly contemporary.”

The Hollow is produced by Fiery Angel in association with Agatha Christie Limited and the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury. It is designed by Joanna Parker, with lighting designed by Chris Davey and casting by Ginny Schiller.