Alibi (play)
play written by Michael Morton
Alibi is a 1928 play by Michael Morton based on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a 1926 novel by British crime writer Agatha Christie.
It opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London's West End on 15 May 1928, starring Charles Laughton as Hercule Poirot. It was deemed a success and ran for 250 performances closing on 7 December 1928. It was the first work of Agatha Christie's to be presented on stage and the first adaptation of one of her works for any medium outside of her books. Retitled The Fatal Alibi, the play was first presented on Broadway in February 1932; the production was directed by Laughton, who reprised the role of Poirot.
Background
Christie disagreed with the change of her favourite character Caroline Sheppard, the inspiration for Miss Marple, into a beautiful girl called Caryl Sheppard. She only permitted this change because the alternative was turning Poirot into a young man called Beau Poirot and having "lots of girls in love with him".
Synopsis
The residents of Fernley Park, the home of Sir Roger Ackroyd, discuss the suicide of a local woman, Mrs. Ashley Ferrars, during the previous night. Ms.
“Alibi (play)” enters the record as play written by Michael Morton. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alibi, play and written can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4725664. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1926 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alibi (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.