Comedy continues the quality Christie series

Last autumn, Joe brought his Agatha Christie Theatre Company to the CFT with his production of And Then There Were None. It was a huge success. He's hoping Spider's Web will tour there now, after the summer. Before that, it plays Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in early May and Brighton's Theatre Royal in mid-July.

"And Then There Were None went fantastically well at the CFT," Joe says. "They were very surprised, which was a delight for us. There was a time when the theatre was rather snooty about Agatha Christie.

In fact, we very, very nearly sold out. Certainly for the second half of the week, as word of mouth spread, we were sold out, which was tremendously gratifying.

"Chichester had not had anything of that sort for a long time. People were very keen thinking it would be nice to have a Christie, but I like to feel that the quality of what we did also really pleasantly surprised people.

"It seemed to us that people like to go and see Christie, but with this, they got Christie with quality."