Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, Chichester Festival Theatre, until Saturday, January 31, adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig, directed by Lucy Bailey. Also Theatre Royal Brighton from March 31-April 4.

Recent TV adaptations have taken the view that they can do whatever they like with Agatha Christie, that whatever she wrote was never quite enough.

And that’s one of the things that make this new stage adaptation of Death on the Nile so admirable.

It takes liberties, and plenty of them. There is some nonsense with a sarcophagus; we miss out the grasping maid altogether; and various of the more minor characters are mixed, matched, merged, renamed and redeployed.

But the essence of the novel is there, ingeniously so and transferred beautifully from the page to the stage.

Mark Hadfield is our Poirot, an unenviable task when David Suchet comes so quickly to mind whenever we think of the character. Suchet was perfect. But Hadfield is excellent too, giving us a weary Poirot, appalled by the evil he is facing and ending it all with a plea just to love each other. Hadfield’s is a less pompous Poirot and certainly a more endearing one.

Bob Barrett, in his third successive Christie, is excellent too as Colonel Race, undercover on his own business but here assisting Poirot dutifully and with plenty of humour – all part of a witty script which also creates all the tension the story needs.

We are in a boat going up the Nile. Among the ill-assorted guests are honeymooners, mega-rich Linnet Ridgeway (Libby Alexandra-Cooper, impressive on professional stage debut) and her husband Simon after the quickest of courtships. The trouble is that Lynette has pinched Simon (Nye Occomore) from her friend Jacqueline de Bellefort (Esme Hough). Lynette’s tragedy – and it is about to get worse – is that Jacqueline, full of vengeance and determined to prick her conscience, has followed them onto the boat. Murder soon follows. And this is where the stage adaptation keeps faith so well with the book. Alexandra-Cooper, Occomore and Hough are just so right in the roles. And the costumes do the rest. There is authenticity here.

The staging is effective – apart maybe from a railing on the upper deck which far too often obscures faces. But otherwise it is all beautifully done, a production which honours Agatha Christie and wraps it all up nicely for a great night at the theatre.