If it wasn’t for cheating husbands, she might not have been the best-selling writer of all time, an honor she shares only with William Shakespeare.

Agatha Christie sought revenge on her philandering first husband with one of the deadliest of weapons: her pen.

With murder in mind, Christie wrote 80 detective novels, as well as a not-so-shabby number of short stories and plays, one of which holds the record for the longest initial run in the world. “Mousetrap,” which opened in 1952, is still running after 23,000 performances.

“Much of her work is all about murder and revenge on nasty husbands,” said Judith Walcutt, director of the upcoming sneak preview of some rediscovered Christie plays.

Walcutt and her husband David Ossman have adapted four little-known pieces of Christie’s for the stage in a visual radio-style performance titled “Agatha Christie and the BBC Murders.” The show is ultimately intended for New York, but will preview at Whidbey Children’s Theater in Langley on Thursday, Aug. 5 through Sunday, Aug. 8.

“A pre-Broadway tryout in Langley? Stranger things have happened,” Walcutt said.

Indeed, the idea is not so far-flung considering the cast of characters Walcutt and Ossman have gathered for this preview show.

The cast of 15 features special guest appearances by Phil Proctor (Howard on “The Rug Rats,” French Monkey in “Doctor Doolittle,” and a founding member of the Firesign Theatre); Melinda Peterson, a veteran actor of stage, screen and television; and Whidbey Island’s own Amy Walker, whose “21 Accents” video has made Internet history.

Sound effects artist Tony Brewer will also make a special appearance, traveling cross-country to perform the show again, as he did for its national debut in 2009, where it was a new play at the International Mystery Writers’ Festival in Owensboro, Ky.

Broadway legend Zev Buffman, CEO and executive producer for the RiverPark Center, where the International Mystery Writers’ Festival is held, gave Ossman and Walcutt the rediscovered Christie pieces to adapt.

Since that time, Ossman and Walcutt have been working on a newer staging of the play, moving it from a “radio”-dominated approach to one which works with set pieces, costume, a focus on the face and the voice, and a use of sound that drives the pieces from exterior realties to interior psychological states.

“We are trying to create an environment in which the listener is led to their own imaginings,” Walcutt said.

“It’s almost as if it’s a deconstructed landscape of what a person’s mind does when they have their eyes closed.”

To help accomplish this task, the team solicited the aid of Bose Speakers International, which is allowing the project to demonstrate its newest technology in professional surround-sound theater systems.

“And we are fortunate to have a venue like Whidbey Children’s Theater, which is receptive to our experimentation while developing this new work. It’s so helpful to have such a place at the heart of our community, and such talented friends and neighbors who are willing to help us achieve the vision of the piece we are trying for — or at least a very respectable ‘artist sketch’ of that vision, which is what this will be for us,” Walcutt said.

While Ossman is concentrating on the audio-phonic aspect of the show, Walcutt, who is directing the show, is challenged with drawing out the emotional life of the narrative. She spent a long time researching the life and work of Christie.

Once the husband-wife collaborators took a look at the four separate pieces which were written for British Broadcasting Company between 1936 and 1954, they felt they needed an additional setting to draw the separate pieces into a coherent whole, which prompted Walcutt to write a play based on Christie’s autobiography.

“Surrounding these four pieces is the character of Agatha talking about the work and her life,” Walcutt said.

“Being aware of how much that first betrayal hurt her and how deep the wound was, you could see how she learned to fix that with savage human prose. She worked out her relationship with her first husband by murdering him over and over again,” she said.

The Christie pieces in this adaptation include “Butter in a Lordly Dish,” “Three Blind Mice,” “Personal Call” and “The Yellow Iris,” a musical piece set in a cabaret that uses original lyrics by Christie and some music by British playwright Rupert Holmes, plus new music recently composed by local musician Robert Marsanyi.

These pieces, Walcutt said, were commissioned by the BBC and became first drafts or sketches for other works.

“Agatha Christie was a very workmanlike writer. She was admirable in that she never wasted anything and had notebooks and notebooks full of ideas that all ended up somewhere as one of her works,” Walcutt said.

Radio was particularly freeing for Christie, as it allowed her to focus on the dialogue. These pieces have all the trademark punch of her work, Walcutt said. Having spent a lot of time alone as a child, Christie would create whole families and histories in her head, she said, and would walk around talking to herself.

Later, when she became a writer, she would do the same; talking aloud, creating characters on her feet and then go to her desk and write it all down.

Being an experimenter herself, Christie might appreciate the collaborative nature of the project that not only explores the combination of radio, theater and modern technology, but also welcomes the youthful energy lent by the younger members of the cast.

“We’ve had so many young people involved in this,” Ossman said. “Recent grads from theater programs and students of film, set design, and other related arts, who are ready to launch their careers and are willing to work with us for the experience.”

Ossman and Walcutt are so stoked by the talented ensemble that they are toying with the idea of creating an annual workshop, to be called “The Young Professional’s Media and Theatre Internship” at Whidbey Children’s Theater.

“We’d like to workshop a show every summer there, to keep the young ones going and growing,” Ossman added.

“It’s been a real lift to see the whole community turn out to help us make this dream a reality,” he said.

The cast also includes Barton Cole, Chris Douthitt, Kim Dunkley, Elizabeth Grant, Gabe Harshman, Suzanne Kelman, Dana Linn, Samantha O’Brochta, David Ossman, Orson Ossman, Preston Ossman, Jim Scullin and Nick Wichman.

“Agatha Christie and the BBC Murders,” will play at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5, Friday, Aug. 6 and Saturday, Aug. 7 and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 8.

Tickets are available at WCT, or reserve them by calling 253-686-3068.

Tickets are $10 for youths and seniors, $15 for adults. All shows are festival seating. On Thursday, Aug. 5, all seats are $10.

Because the show is being produced primarily as a producers’ and backers’ audition, seats for the public will be limited.