STAGE REVIEW : Strong Cast in an Energetic ‘Hollow’ : Christie whodunit in Long Beach is a zippy show with splashes of wit. The portrayals have a self-deprecating slyness about them.

Agatha Christie’s formula for stage mysteries is as simple as the perfect murder may be complicated: put a bunch of well-heeled Brits in a fancy house for a chummy get-together, crack the civility with a nasty killing, and then bring in a detective or two to make sense of the mayhem.

Christie worked this number in most of her whodunits, one of them being “The Hollow” (adapted from her novel, “Murder After Hours”), now in an entertaining revival at the Long Beach Civic Playhouse.

The surface calm and good manners of “The Hollow” hides some sexy business, all adding up to danger. Dr. John Cristow has a dim, plain but apparently loving wife. He also has a mistress, the sculptor Henrietta. Then there’s Veronica Craye, a flamboyant movie actress and former lover who just happens to live in the estate next door.

When all these folk join with an assortment of other English gentry for an oh-so-refined weekend in the country, we know it’s just a matter of time before Cristow’s extramarital shenanigans put him in deadly trouble. It’s up to Inspector Colquhoun (Bob May) and Detective Sgt. Penny (Mark O’Bar) to sort it all out.

Director Scott Allen (who may be remembered locally for his acting in recent Grove Shakespeare Festival productions of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Merchant of Venice”) is guilty of letting the second act, with all its talk about clues and the like, drag in stretches, but this is overall a zippy show with splashes of wit.

One of the wittiest is Meg Gilbert as Lady Angkatell, the matronly head of the house where all the dirty deeds occur. Gilbert takes advantage of Christie’s characterization of Lady Angkatell as a good-natured eccentric by turning the role into the show’s most consistent clown.

Actually, this is a strong cast, mostly amateurs, all the way down the line. The accents, so often misused and abused in community-theater productions, are right on in Long Beach, and the portrayals tend to have a self-deprecating slyness about them.

Thomas Belgrey gives Cristow the right self-absorption and mildly caddish edge, and Pamela MacIntosh’s Henrietta is appropriately artsy and airy. Mary Dryden’s heavily affected Veronica is hilarious.

‘The Hollow’

A Long Beach Community Playhouse production of Agatha Christie’s mystery. Directed by Scott Allen. With Pamela MacIntosh, Paul E. Rogers, Meg Gilbert, Stephanie Clark, Jeff Lappin, Rick Knolla, Terie Bostic, Louise Martin, Thomas Belgrey, Mary Dryden, Bob May and Mark O’Bar. Set by Steven Jay Warner. Lighting by Scott Allen and Steven Jay Warner. Costumes by Terre Allen. Plays Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and this Sunday and March 15 at 2 p.m. through March 21 at the playhouse’s Mainstage Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. (310) 494-1616.