IT would be criminal if the 125th anniversary of the birth of the ‘Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie, and the 10th anniversary of the Agatha Christie Theatre Company were not marked.

Thankfully the opportunity is not being missed and to mark both occasions, Christie’s most popular and best-selling thriller - And Then There Were None – is on a national tour and this Bill Kenwright production is set to appear at Malvern’s Festival Theatre for a week from Monday, March 16 to Saturday, March 21.

A strong and well known cast has been lined up which features West End and TV star Paul Nicholas, who will play judge Sir Lawrence Wargrave, and he will be joined by Colin Buchanan who takes on the role of retired police inspector William Henry Blore.

Also starring will be Susan Penhaligon, as eccentric spinster Emily Brent, Mark Curry, Verity Rushworth, Frazer Hines and Ben Nealon.

Paul Nicholas is probably still best known for his role as Vince Pinner in the 80s BBC sitcom, Just Good Friends, and other series, but his biggest success has been his musical theatre career.

He first made his name in the original London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, in which he played the title role. He also starred in Hair where he worked with Elaine Paige and the pair went on to play Danny and Sandy in the West End production of Grease, the first British couple to do so.

In 1997, he teamed up with Bill Kenwright to co-produce a new musical based on Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, in which he starred as Sidney Carton. In recent years he produced and directed a UK tour of Keeler, based on the Profumo Affair and in February 2013 starred in Dear World at the Charing Cross Theatre.

Colin Buchanan, best known for playing DI Pascoe for 11 years in the hit BBC television series Dalziel and Pascoe, and he joins the cast off the back of starring in a UK tour of another Kenwright production, JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner.

Also in the cast is Susan Penhaligon, who is possibly best known for starring in the 1976 ITV drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire and for playing Judi Dench's sister in the 1981 LWT sitcom A Fine Romance. Her West End theatre credits include The Three Sisters (Albery Theatre) Of Mice and Men (Mermaid) The Maintenance Man (Comedy Theatre) Mr Love (Comedy Theatre) The Real Thing (Strand Theatre) and Dangerous Corner (Whitehall Theatre). She has also appeared on TV many times in dramas such as Upstairs Downstairs, Tales of the Unexpected, Bergerac, Casualty and Touch of Frost.

Mark Curry is well remembered by children of the Eighties as one of the Blue Peter presenters, while Frazer Hines, who is well known to Doctor Who fans for his role as Jamie McCrimmon - companion to the second Doctor Patrick Troughton, is probably still remembered more in his biggest TV role as Joe Sugden. This was in the long-running ITV soap Emmerdale and it was a role which he played for 22 years, from the pilot episode in 1972. Both actors also have considerable theatre experience.

Another former Emmerdale star who will be on stage is Verity Rushworth who was Donna Windsor-Dingle.

She first landed this part in 1998 when she was just 12 years old. After ten years as Donna, her final scenes were aired in January 2009. The next month she made her West End debut in the musical Hairspray in the role of Penny Pingleton which she played until March 2010. In January 2011, she played Maria Von Trapp in the UK tour of The Sound of Music, taking over the role from Connie Fisher. In January 2014, she announced she would be returning to Emmerdale to reprise her role of Donna and returned on screen in March last year. She stayed for five months before departing in August.

Ben Nealon has a number of TV credits alongside his name including Casualty, The Bill, EastEnders and Doctors, and film roles include the Bollywood blockbusters The Rising and the Oscar-nominated Lagaan. However he is best known for his role as 2nd Lt/Lt/Capt Jeremy Forsythe in the ITV award winning series Soldier Soldier. His previous work for Bill Kenwright includes The Signal Man (Windsor) and the Passport For Pimlico tour.

As the Agatha Christie Theatre Company marks its 10th anniversary with this production, the interest and adoration for the great Dame Christie - who having sold over two billion books worldwide is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare - continues to grow.

And Then There Were None is the world’s best-selling mystery ever, with 100 million sales to date. Widely considered to be Christie’s masterpiece, her own stage adaptation of this dark and captivating tale is set to thrill and enthral, as murder unfolds… A group of 10 strangers is lured to a remote island off the coast of Devon. Upon arrival it is discovered that their host, an eccentric millionaire, is missing. At dinner a recorded message is played accusing each of them in turn of having a guilty secret and by the end of the evening the 10 guests become nine.

Stranded on the island by a torrential storm, and haunted by an ancient nursery rhyme, one by one the guests begin to die. And with only the fallen believed to be innocent who amongst them is the killer?