Mystery at Silent Pool: Agatha Christie Disappears at the Lucernaire

Mystery at Silent Pool: Agatha Christie is Missing, a detective play by Carla Girod, Drys Penthier and Axel Stein-Kurdzielewicz, is staged at Le Lucernaire in Paris by Compagnie des Ballons Rouges, from June 10 to August 23, 2026. The show revisits the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926, blending investigation, unsettled memory, and theatrical fiction.

And what if the queen of crime herself becomes the center of the investigation? Mystery at Silent Pool, Agatha Christie Has Disappeared, a detective play by Carla Girod, Drys Penthier and Axel Stein-Kurdzielewicz, is being staged at the Lucernaire, in Paris, by the Compagnie des Ballons Rouges, anchored around the real-life 1926 disappearance of Agatha Christie, running from June 10 to August 23, 2026. The show revisits the strange vanishing of the British novelist, whose car was found wrecked near the Silent Pool pond, before she reappeared eleven days later in a rest home, under a false name and suffering from amnesia.

The play unfolds as a theatrical inquiry led by Inspector Kenward and his partner Hastings. Abduction, murder, voluntary disappearance, or a private staging: clues multiply as the questioning progresses. Surrounding Agatha Christie are a number of suspicious figures, from the loyal housekeeper and the unfaithful husband to the frail friend and the shady publisher. The text blends sensational true-crime, detective fiction, and literary imagination, drawing on the codes of the author’s world without claiming to definitively resolve the historical mystery.

The staging plays with shifting timelines, flashbacks, and red herrings, crafting a narrative conceived as a labyrinth. Central to the design are three movable panels that can reveal, in turn, a police station, a living room, or the edge of a pond. The soundscape and costumes evoke interwar Britain, while the play maintains a theatrical crime-thriller tone, with English wit touted as one of the show’s driving forces.

**Trailer for Mystery at Silent Pool at the Lucernaire:**

With Mystère at Silent Pool, the Compagnie des Ballons Rouges continues its work on popular, accessible stories brought to life by clearly recognizable characters. This production chooses to begin from a well-known episode in Agatha Christie’s life to create a space between memory, invention, and detective theatre. In this murky terrain, the disappearance becomes less a straightforward case to be solved than a playground for interrogating what we think we know about a figure who has almost become mythical.

This page may contain AI-assisted elements, more information here.