First Folio serves up Agatha Christie murder-mystery with a side of comedy

“The Secret Council” - ★ ★ ★

This time of year, First Folio Theatre typically schedules a comedy. Usually it's one that makes braving single-digit wind chills worthwhile.

This year the Oak Brook theater tweaks its tradition, premiering a whodunit-with-humor titled “The Secret Council.” Adapted from Agatha Christie's 1922 novel “The Secret Adversary” by co-founder and executive artistic director David Rice, “The Secret Council” incorporates some witty badinage and comedic bits at which First Folio artistic associates Melanie Keller and Joe Foust are especially adept.

First Folio's production benefits from Brigitte Ditmars' sprightly direction. Her stylized set changes, accompanied by sound designer Christopher Kriz's spiffy, genre-specific music, are a delight. The production also boasts an artfully designed set by perennial Joseph Jefferson Award nominee Angela Weber Miller (whose nine nominations for her First Folio designs are well-deserved). When it comes to the script, however, “The Secret Council” falls short.

The convoluted plot is too often overburdened by excessive exposition. Case in point: The penultimate scene, much of which is devoted to a back story involving a character who's no longer part of the narrative. The effect is to slow the momentum, which happens more than once.

Jeff Award winner Rice knows how to adapt a story, but “The Secret Council's” muddled narrative needs streamlining and clarifying. Moreover, the characters we're most invested in - Twopence (Keller) and Tommy (Andrés Enriquez), childhood friends turned detectives on the cusp of romance - spend too much time apart. That's a missed opportunity considering the charm that comes from the droll banter between the couple.

The action commences with a flashback to the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915. Eloquently choreographed by Jeff Award-winning choreographer Ditmars and set to Kriz's music, the pantomime prologue shows the exchange of a parcel followed by a murder.

Fast forward to 1929 London, where we meet Tommy and Twopence. The self-styled “adventurers for hire” are at a pub called The Weasel and The Toad, headquarters for their new agency, whose services include solving mysteries.

They're enlisted by Mr. Carter (Elizabeth Ledo), a British intelligence official, to find a secret treaty reportedly in the hands of a Lusitania survivor. Signed by Great Britain and the U.S. during World War I, the treaty was in the possession of a courier onboard the doomed ship who entrusted it to a female passenger before he suffered an untimely end.

Joining in their search for the missing female passenger who may know the treaty's whereabouts is Sam Glass (James Lewis), an American private detective with ties to the U.S. government. But that's just one thread in this complicated tapestry, which unfolds a threatened nationwide strike by British workers that is apparently being stoked by Boleshviks (with help from French, German and Irish agitators) who want to disrupt Great Britain's economy and ignite civil unrest. Covert alliances and secret meetings, a mysterious woman and an illicit affair and murder make up the rest of an often confusing tale whose pointed references to workers' equity and foreign election interference are particularly topical.

The performances are solid in the play, the conclusion of which hints at a sequel. Keller, whose Twopence emerges as the heroine in this female-centered tale, has a razor-sharp delivery characteristic of an early 20th-century, upper-middle-class wit unafraid to speak her mind. Enriquez makes a charming foil. And Ledo, who like most of the cast takes on multiple roles, is spot-on as both a brandy-sipping official and a congenial pub owner. But it's Foust who supplies the biggest laughs in a series of delightfully silly turns as a Russian apparatchik, an amorous matron and a cranky husband, among others.

It's the play that needs a bit more polish. But once Rice shines it up, “The Secret Council” could make for an even better midwinter diversion.

Location: First Folio Theatre at Mayslake Peabody Estate, 1717 W. 31st St., Oak Brook, (630) 986-8067, firstfolio.org

Showtimes: 8 p.m. Wednesday and Friday; 3 p.m. Thursday; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 27

Running time: About two hours, including intermission

Tickets: $49-$59

Parking: Free parking in adjacent lot

COVID-19 precautions: Proof of vaccination including booster required. Masks required at all times, regardless of vaccination status.