Telling the extraordinary tale of Houdini’s widow – in Eastbourne

It comes from producer/playwright Christine Foster and will be directed by James Weisz with Pip Henderson as Bess. After Eastbourne, it then moves to Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London from October 24-November 12.

“Bess was somebody that Houdini originally partnered with but then she stepped back and let him take the limelight,” Christine explains. “She was clever and a very bright and breezy woman.

"They fell in love and got married within two weeks and stayed together until he died in 1926. They were together close to 30 years, I think.

"They were a real partnership and she supported him in everything.

"He said that he could not have done what he did without her support which means that she's in that position that is so often the case of being yet another unknown woman behind a famous man. Harry was the real superstar in the role that he virtually created as a superstar. There were no flies on him when it came to promotion. He knew what he was doing and she was there for him. Our play takes place a couple of years after he died. She had a breakdown. She was fighting alcoholism and drugs and she had tried to hurt herself. In real life she checked into a sanatorium and our play takes place while she is reliving and fantasising and trying to get better.

"We have magic and we have illusions happening while that is happening. And over the course of the play she decides that she is going to live and to preserve his memory.”

As for Houdini's death, mystery remains.

"It is still up for grabs whether he was murdered or not. He had spent the last ten years before his death debunking spiritualism. He was so sceptical. He would attend seances and figure out what was actually going on and he would blow the whistle. The spiritualists lost millions and they hated him and so there was a chance that he was murdered.

"But what happened eventually was that he was in his dressing room with a hurt ankle waiting to go on and several students were with him and one of them punched him very hard in the stomach five times because he had given out at some point that his stomach was such a hard washboard that he could withstand any blow.

"But the problem was that he was unwell and he was lying down. It is suspicious that he was punched five times. He did the show but then he collapsed back-stage later and was rushed to hospital. He was in hospital for three days with peritonitis before he died. But it is certainly possible that he was murdered when you think why punch five times.”

Bess, it seems, tried to make contact with him after his death. It is 1929, the height of the spiritualist frenzy. The thinking is that surely if anyone can break through from the Other Side, it’s Harry. But when Bess hints that he already has, she is accused of rigging the séance.

Broke, broken and hounded by the press, she flees to a private sanatorium….