photo by: Mike Yoder

Actors Ken Stewart, from left, Diane Wurzer and Chuck Mosley rehearse a scene Wednesday for Theatre Lawrence's production of “And Then There Were None," a mystery by Agatha Christie.

Few entertainments are more riveting than a British murder mystery — a fact happily embraced by Theatre Lawrence, which is producing two such dramas, back to back, this season.

First up is the classic “And Then There Were None,” which opens Friday. The play is based on Agatha Christie’s 83-year-old novel — by many accounts, the bestselling mystery of all time. Christie also wrote the stage version of “None” a few years later, although with a happier ending for a sunnier-minded theater crowd.

“It’s very British, very 1930s,” says Jason Smith, who is directing Theatre Lawrence’s show.

The plot involves a cast of characters who find themselves invited to a small island in the English Channel, where — one by one — they perish, in accordance with a sinister nursery rhyme that ends with the chilling line “And then there were none.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

Jason Smith is the director of “And Then There Were None” at Theatre Lawrence.

One of Smith’s favorite things about the play is the absence of “set relationships” among the characters.

“This play is unique in the fact that no one really knows anybody,” he says, noting that the characters learn about one another — in unsavory detail — at the same pace as the audience. “We all kind of start at the beginning together.”

Another thing that he thinks distinguishes the play is a “richness” that goes beyond the sheer escapism of many mysteries.

As the characters — all harboring a dark past — are bumped off, the show is transformed from a simple whodunit into a meditation on larger themes, Smith says: “What is justice? How do we judge each other? And how do we judge ourselves? Where do we all stand morally on who we are and what we’ve done in our past? What does our past bring to our present?”

Smith notes that the island setting — kind of “beautiful” and kind of “creepy” — is perfectly suited to the moral turmoil and violence that punch through the deceptively genteel surface. He credits Theatre Lawrence’s technical director, James Diemer, with designing a set that “conceptualizes all that and brings it to life.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

Actors Christian Johanning, from left, Beth Dearinger, Chuck Mosley and Zachary Stockton rehearse “And Then There Were None,” a mystery by Agatha Christie, which opens Friday, March 4, 2022, at Theatre Lawrence.

Diemer, who has designed dozens of elaborate sets in his nine-year tenure with the theater, says “And Then There Were None” was particularly fun to do because the script leaves so much to the set designer’s imagination.

“You could probably see 50 productions of this show, and every single one will look drastically different,” he says, noting that the script “only prescribes a hallway exit, a dining room door, a study door and a balcony and a fireplace, so everything else is kind of up to the designer.”

Diemer chose a design that allowed for a spectrum of moods. At its center is a large wall of windows that bathe the stage in morning sunshine but also in ominous lightning, mirroring the increasingly spooky plot developments.

The room is “overbearing in a way, but it’s also kind of comfy and kind of a place I really wanted to feel like, in the beginning of the show, is a place I’d want to go to,” he says. “And then as the show goes on, feeling like, wow, this is really a trap.”

One challenge of producing a mystery at Theatre Lawrence, Diemer says, is that the stage is not a traditional proscenium design, but instead has three sides jutting out into the audience, which makes “all the things you have to hide in the show infinitely harder” — things like sneaky murderers, weapons and other potential spoilers.

That particular difficulty, though, gave rise to some especially creative solutions, and those, Diemer says, will be “half the fun for the audience.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

Rehearsing a scene from the play “And Then There Were None,” a mystery by Agatha Christie, are actors Christoph Cording, from left, Callee Harris and Nathan Stock, pictured Wednesday, March 2, 2022, at Theatre Lawrence.

Theatre Lawrence’s second British mystery of the season, opening April 22, is “The Girl on the Train,” which, like “And Then There Were None,” is based on a bestselling novel.

Paula Hawkins’ psychological thriller fast-forwards us to the 21st century, and Diemer says it will have a very different feel.

“It’s very modern. There’s a lot of cellphone usage. … It sort of floats from place to place between all these different locations,” he says, “whereas (Christie’s play) is so firmly grounded in the single cage where they’re stuck. It’s kind of interesting, actually. They’re very, very different while having the same goal.”

“And Then There Were None” is scheduled to open Friday at Theatre Lawrence, 4660 Bauer Farm Drive, and will have multiple performances through March 13. For information about tickets, call 785-843-SHOW (7469) or go online at theatrelawrence.com. Proof of vaccination and masks are required at all shows.