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What it is to be Joan Hickson
Well, actually I know what it is, and there’s no need to go into that. What I meant was, how fascinating it is to be the iconic best at something. Even taking into account that iconic best isn’t something everyone would agree on. In this case, it’s Hickson’s brilliant portrayal of the quintessential spinster sleuth, Miss Marple. When I think of Miss Marple, I think of Joan Hickson.
That gentle dignity and dry, ironic humor — the razor blade intellect that cut through all fuss and flutter and reduced the most complicated and bewildering crime to its simple village equivalent.
I was thinking about this last Sunday when I tuned into Masterpiece Mystery and watched Julia McKenzie, pick up the famous knitting needles. McKenize is the lastest in a long line of Miss Marples that includes some pretty impressive talent including Margaret Rutherford (whose zany Miss Marple was loads of fun but nothing like the books), Angela Lansbury, and Helen Hayes. Joan Hickson was not quite in the same class as some of those others, but she made the role of Miss Marple her own. For me, she’s the gold standard by which all other Miss M’s must be judged — and generally fall short.
I thought this version of Marple was a vast improvement over Geraldine McEwan, who played the elderly sleuth as the kind of parody you’d expect to find in village amateur theatrics. The real problem, though, was the writing, which was progressively ghastly as though the writer(s) had never read an Agatha Christie novel or simply didn’t “get” it.
“It” being that there’s no point advertising something as Agatha Christie or Miss Marple or a pleasant cross country journey and then expect viewers to be best pleased when you run the train off the rails and into a mosquito-infested swamp.
Last week’s Pocketful of Rye was a vast improvement in that McKenzie played Marple as a brisk, sharp, headmistressy sort of late middle-aged lady — not the Marple I know and love, but not actually offensive. And the plot, which stuck very closely to the Hickson version of same, was entertaining and well-done. Familiar, yes, but that’s sort of the charm, isn’t it? We don’t turn into Miss Marple to see New and Improved. There is no new and improving Miss Marple.
Anyway, I’ll have missed this week’s offering as I’m in Dunsmuir performing with the sibs, but I hope that it was as good as last week’s.
But — returning to my original point — how difficult it must be to follow in the steps of Hickson’s sensible shoes — given that she was Christie’s own choice for the role. How difficult it is for any of us when we are the one’s following the proverbial Hard Act.
