17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Orange Juice: A hilarious puppet twist on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None in Delhi
On a mysterious, lonely island somewhere across the seas, someone has been murdered— and one by one, many more follow, until there are none. The synopsis sounds eerily familiar to anyone who has devoured a murder mystery or two. This is none other than Agatha Christie's world-famous And Then There Were None. But in this version, the bodies aren't human — they're orange-headed puppets. A puppetry trio in Delhi takes Christie's dark classic and spins it into a comical, chaotic puppet thriller, replacing people with felt, foam, and a whole lot of introspection.
Titled Orange Juice and written by Anamika Mishra, this glove puppetry production is helmed by puppeteers Anurupa Roy, BV Shrunga, and Anirbaan Ghosh. The play opened to a full house this weekend at Delhi's OddBird Theatre.
'We called it Orange Juice because all the puppets are oranges,' says Roy. 'In the show, it's fruits that are being murdered. It's a metaphor. Fruit is ordinary, common, disposable — much like people. We're trying to explore the idea that death, while tragic, is also deeply mundane. It happens all the time.'
Roy has long wanted to stage a murder mystery, and as a Christie fan, this adaptation felt like the perfect fit. 'It's one of Christie's darker works,' she says. 'The novel's darkness lends itself well to dark humour. But at the end of the day, our puppetry show is still a comedy.'
