MOTOE cast party favors

/ Kelly Klages / 1 Comment

I am thirty-six times an idiot for not sharing photos of the cast party favors I’d made for Murder on the Orient Express!

I created a rectangular piece out of clay with train tracks and the title of the play, made a mold out of it, and made chocolates that I accented with edible paints and lustre dust. There are also cookies with mustache-embossed fondant. All packed in cute little suitcase boxes with train charms. ❤

POIROT – A Celebration of Style

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The Ultimate Fashion History, a YouTube channel hosted by Amanda Hallay, has recently published a delightful half-hour video on the series Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It’s a fascinating look at the fashion and style choices of the series, and how individual characters are made unique through the distinctives of their aesthetic. Definitely check it out!!! (Screen shots below from the YouTube episode.)



Flatlands Theatre Co. performs Murder on the Orient Express!

/ Kelly Klages / 2 Comments

We just finished our show (November 3-6 at the P.W. Enns Centennial Concert Hall in Winkler, Manitoba). We all had a fantastic time– cast, crew, and audiences! Great turnout, awesome production. 🙂 🙂 🙂

I got to play the role of Mary Debenham, while Alex, my husband, was Col. Arbuthnot. How cute is that?? We actually got to get kissy on stage. I did some set painting as well– specifically, the exterior of the Orient Express train. Our daughter Ana played one of the waitresses at the Tokatliyan Hotel in Istanbul, as well as doing some planning for costumes and working as a stage hand.

I’ll probably be doing a series of posts about it, especially since I’m hoping more photos will come in, but here are a few cast photos to start you off…

Here’s Keith and Eric who played Bouc and Poirot.

Me and Alex as Mary Debenham and Col. Arbuthnot:

Here’s Alex again with our daughter Ana.

Quentin as Hector MacQueen:

Chuck and Erin (another real-life couple) as Michel and Mrs. Hubbard:

Eric again, in performance:

In a “scene not appearing in book,” my character is shot in the arm. During the intermission I got bloodied up and glued upon by the director. That prosthetic DID NOT want to stay on!! But we made it work! The construction crew did an AMAZING job with this multilayered train set. Half our stage was the sleeper carriage (as you see here) and half was the dining car.

The dining car during the final scene, where we’ve been called together for the big reveal. This photo was evidently taken before our curtains, and some other final details, were added to the train car.



The show was so much fun!! Many thanks to all involved and all who came out to see us!

The Booker Prize… and Poirot’s lamp

/ Kelly Klages / 1 Comment

Not long ago, I received an email from the grandson of the first Booker Prize recipient (P.H. Newby, in 1969). The Booker Prize is a prestigious award for English literature. This gentleman had been using this, your humble Poirot blog, for research. 🙂

When his grandfather received the trophy, the design was of a woman standing and holding a bowl, executed in Art Deco style. It was designed by Jan Pienkowski, who modeled it from an old statue he purchased from a junk shop. The trophy was used for a few years but then changed to something else; more recently they’ve been looking at going back to the original design. My correspondent had been talking to the Booker Prize director about this, and she said she heard the original inspiration was a lamp. He mentioned it to his mother, Newby’s daughter and an avid Poirot fan, and she said, “Oh yes, Poirot has one!”

This led the gentleman to my Poirot blog and a post I’d done on Picasso prints in Poirot’s flat. One of my screen shots has a close-up of Poirot’s distinctive Art Deco lamp (I’d created a miniature replica of the same lamp for one of my 1:12 scale miniature room boxes). The similarities are unmistakable.

I agreed with my correspondent’s suspicion that the Booker Prize was indeed modeled after this very make of lamp. Unfortunately, not being an expert in tracking down antiques, I couldn’t give him any additional ideas on how to acquire this particular kind of item. I wish him luck in his venture!

I thought this was a super-fun story. 🙂 To learn more about the history of the Booker Prize trophy, check out this page!

My Murder on the Orient Express quilt is done!!!

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Finally! And just in time for our upcoming fall performance of Murder on the Orient Express with Flatlands Theatre Company. 🙂

The “Poirot words” fabric is my own design, and it’s come in handy for many projects. I quilted this one up myself by stitching in the ditch, because I didn’t want all those right angles to be lost and buried under some random squiggly quilting design.

The backing. The top section of moustaches is a little larger than the bottom… such is the “centering” risk one runs when piecing together a quilt backing.

Backing detail. The main fabric was a custom Spoonflower design (someone else’s) specifically themed on the 1970s “MOTOE” film with Albert Finney. 🙂 It seems to work well, color-wise, with the moustache fabric to pull together all those diverse earth tones and gray tones.

I had to include a satin brocade in honor of the scarlet kimono embroidered with dragons! ❤