‘Peril in the Alps’ brings mystery, laughs and an iconic detective to Chemainus


‘Peril in the Alps’ brings mystery, laughs and an iconic detective to Chemainus


Published 11:30 am Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Murder, mystery and plenty of laughs are headed to the Chemainus Theatre Festival stage this fall as Hercule Poirot takes on a new case in Peril in the Alps.

The Agatha Christie-inspired mystery runs Sept. 25 to Oct. 25, combining the familiar world of the meticulous Belgian detective with fast paced comedy, inventive staging and a cast that transforms into nearly 30 different characters over the course of the show.

Artistic director Mark DuMez, who is directing the production, said the play arrives at a time when murder mysteries are enjoying renewed popularity across film, television and theatre.

“There’s a real curiosity about murder mysteries right now that you can see across culture,” DuMez said. “This play combines a kind of classic Agatha Christie-style murder mystery with a comedic overlay. So there’s two poles to the piece — the comedy and the mystery.”

Written by Steven Dietz and based in part on Christie’s Poirot Investigates, the play follows Poriot into the snowy Swiss Alps in pursuit of clues and kidnappers, with Captain Hastings along for the adventure.

Ian Farthing, a longtime Chemainus Theatre performer, takes on the iconic role of Poirot, while Ming Hudson plays Hastings. Kaitlin Olmert, Connor Ripple, Andy Marie and Dustin Freehand make up the remainder of the principal case, collectively taking on dozens of characters.

DuMez said watching the actors move between those roles is part of the fun.

Those transformations involve different accents, personalities and physicalities, creating comedy while still allowing the mystery at the heart of the production to unfold.

DuMez compared the theatrical style to previous Chemainus productions such as The 39 Steps and Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, although he said Peril in the Alps has a stronger story thread running through the transformations.

“There’s little kind of pseudo-puppet scenes — not really puppets, but animated items — and some really interesting theatrical staging, along with just following the mystery inside of it,” he said. “Steven Dietz has done a really good job of creating a very faithful Agatha Christie piece based on a bunch of short stories, but then really created a nice theatrical quality to it.”

For Farthing, stepping into the shoes of one of fiction’s most recognizable detectives came with a particular challenge: audiences already have an idea of who Hercule Poirot should be.

“Poirot is such an iconic character and everybody has their own vision of what they think he is,” Farthing said, pointing to well-known screen portrayals by actors including David Suchet and Kenneth Branagh. “You kind of have to forget all about that because you have to come in and make it your own.”

Farthing began preparing for the role months before rehearsal started, tackling the roughly 90-page script at a pace of about one page a day beginning in May.

His research also included drawing from Suchet’s work developing the character. Farthing said the actor complied a list of 93 characteristics of Poirot, found throughout Christie’s writing, from his meticulous personal cleanliness to insistence that two boiled eggs served at breakfast must be the exact same size.

The audience may never fully see those details come to life on stage, Farthing said, but they help inform the character underneath the dialogue.

His biggest task, however, was getting the words off the page and into his body.

“Until I have really got the lines learned, then you can’t really settle into the character,” Farthing said. “Once those lines have become just a natural thought process rather than trying to think, ‘What am I saying next?’ … I could then move on to how this character reacts and connects with everybody on stage.”

Farthing said playing such a recognizable character also carries a responsibility to preserve what audiences know and love about Poirot while avoiding an imitation of actors who have come before him.

“There’s a responsibility playing an iconic role because you don’t want to present something that’s too different from what people have in their imaginations,” he said. “It’s got to be in the same ballpark.”

Some differences are unavoidable.

“He’s five-foot-four and bald in the books, and I’m five-foot-eleven and luckily still have a bit of hair,” Farthing joked. “But the essence of the character — that’s what you have to try and nail.”

For Farthing, much of that essence comes down to Poirot’s power of observation and the famous “little grey cells” he relies on to solve his cases.

“He keenly observes everything,” Farthing said. “If a little speck of dust [was] there, he would notice.”

While Poirot may already be several steps ahead, Farthing said there is a generosity in the way the detective allows the people around him — and, by extension, the audience — to arrive at discoveries alongside him.

Behind the mystery is a production that has been in the works for close to a year. Auditions typically take place six months to a year ahead of a show, while sets, costumes and other elements are designed and prepared before the cast comes together.

Actors began full time rehearsals about three and a half weeks before opening night. As the production moved onto the Chemainus stage this week, the team was beginning the technical rehearsal process, working through roughly 150 sound cues and hundreds of lighting cues.

Despite all that preparation, DuMez said there is still something surprising about the moment the pieces finally come together.

“I’m always surprised by how fun it is to tell a story,” he said. “You get everybody in the room, and you work on the text and you dig into it.”

For DuMez, that experience of gathering together is also part of what makes live theatre particularly meaningful right now.

“I think that live theatre is an antidote right now to the synthetic things that we can experience in other places,” he said.

That begins when the cast and creative team first sit down together with a script and continues when an audience fills the theatre and the lights go down.

“You’re all experiencing the story together,” DuMez said. “It’s live, and it’s authentic, and it’s not AI-generated. It’s very much here and now.”

Peril in the Alps runs Sept. 25 to Oct. 25 at the Chemainus Theatre Festival.