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I can’t find my copy of it, so it must be in the storage shed (ie, not in the building, in the remote locker), but I’m thinking that in the original, Christine gave Rhoda the sleeping pills, then shot herself with a handgun. We hear the gun go off remotely-- that is, we see Christine take the gun, in the visible set (the living room, it would be, in a typical staging of the play), then she walks into another “room,” which is to say, she exits through a door built into the living room set, and we hear the gun go off.
I can’t remember whether that is the very last scene, or if there is a scene with the other characters that makes it clear that both Rhoda and Christine are, in fact, dead. I think in the novelization, it is made absolutely clear, but I don’t know whether the intent of the playwright is to make it slightly ambiguous whether Rhoda actually died of the sleeping pills, or just not to show us anyone’s grief, as at that point it would be gratuitous-- after all, he wrote such a wrenching scene with Claude’s mother, I can’t imagine what he write for Rhoda’s father.
I have seen the movie three or four times, most recently about two or three years ago. I saw the play only once, though. It was a university production, and very good-- high production values, and seniors and grad students in acting at a pretty decent state school, which has turned out some very good performers. Not Yale drama, but not a community theater production either. Anyway, it was either when I was a student, or shortly thereafter, so it was about 30 years ago.
I read the novelization when I was around 30, so maybe 24 years ago.
I do have a pretty good memory for such things, but I also sometimes conflate things when they were that long ago. It’s also not impossible that different endings for the play exist: if the playwright wanted to end it with both dead, and the producer wanted both to live, they could have compromised with only Christine living, but may have written all three endings, and the distribution company offered all three endings to producers and directors who wanted to rent the script-- or get permission to put on an amateur production for free, like a high school production-- so actually, all those endings may be out there.
I’m not saying they are, just that I know from doing theater in high school that when you book a script, sometimes you are offered multiple endings, or scenes that are either alternate version of scenes, or additional scenes that can be included or left out.