Fiery Angel’s hugely successful UK & Ireland Tour of Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express will tour China from 8 October to 11 December 2025. The production, directed by Lucy Bailey, will once again be led by Michael Maloney as Hercule Poirot. This will be the first English-speaking version to be staged in China and the tour is presented by Fiery Angel in partnership with RTS Entertainment and in association with Agatha Christie Limited.
The UK & Ireland Tour ran from September 2024 to May 2025 to much critical and public acclaim, selling over 170,000 tickets, with ticket sales at £5.8 million. Many of the venues saw first-time theatregoers coming to this Agatha Christie classic, including 24% of ticket buyers in Southampton, 20% in Birmingham and 13.5% in Glasgow.
The Chinese tour will visit 11 cities: Suzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Wuxi, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Beijing. Shanghai went on sale on Wednesday 25 June and sold out four performances (7,500 tickets) in eight minutes. Last year, Fiery Angel and RTS Entertainment introduced Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None to Chinese audiences. The production drew an impressive audience of over 63,000 across 13 cities.
Edward Snape of Fiery Angel said, “I am so thrilled to be partnering again with RTS Entertainment and our wonderful partner Boris Cao to bring Murder on the Orient Express to China. Lucy Bailey’s production was so brilliantly received across its 26-week UK Tour, playing to over 170,000 people, and we cannot wait to share it with Chinese audiences.”
Michael Maloney added, “I am extremely excited and honoured to play Poirot in this production of Murder on the Orient Express and especially to be able to bring it to China. This is an exciting production of a beautifully written story. We look forward to entertaining audiences and hope we can surprise them until the end! Wo men jv chang jian (See you there!).”
Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s greatest literary achievements, with a final twist that is amongst her very best. It is the winter of 1934 and an avalanche stops the Orient Express dead in its tracks. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed eight times, his door locked from the inside. Trapped in the snow with a killer still on board, can the world’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot, crack the case before the train reaches its final destination?
Murder on the Orient Express is directed by Lucy Bailey (Witness for the Prosecution, And Then There Were None, The Other Boleyn Girl) and designed by Mike Britton, with lighting design by Oliver Fenwick, video design by Ian Galloway, sound design by Mic Pool, movement direction by Leah Hausman, casting by Abby Galvin and with Victoria Gartner as assistant director.
