You don’t go to an Agatha Christie play expecting surprises – TV has seen to that. Yet every year The Agatha Christie Theatre Company attracts crowded houses in theatres up and down the UK – including Brighton.

When the curtain lifts on this one, the scene is notable not for a dusty old lamp-lit sepia wood-panelled library, but for its bright walls and Sophie Ward’s colourful 1960s Yves St Laurent dress and red pumps.

It’s all very lively on the eye, and with 1960s hits between swift set changes, it make one sit up and pay attention, forgetting for a moment that this is familiar territory.

Regrettably, while the set designer is an artist who makes every scene worthy of a colour photo, it seems that beauty really is only skin deep. Ben Nealon’s stint as a solicitor retracing his firm’s defence of a convicted murderer can’t really make up for the absence of Hercule Poirot, even if he is the most convincing in a quite wooden rehearsal of events considering its starry cast.

Frankly, one is more thankful for the murder of arrogant chauvinist Amyas than bothered by who did it.