By Jamie Hill
Review: The Mousetrap, Oxford New Theatre, Nov 28 to 30
I’m not very good at keeping secrets. I would make a rubbish spy and would break under interrogation just by someone uttering the word ‘interrogation’.
But I’ve now made a solemn vow to never reveal the ‘murderer’ in Agatha Christie’s Whodunnit play The Mousetrap that is currently on a UK tour.
I made the vow at Oxford’s New Theatre on Monday evening. And it’s a vow that I will never break.
Mainly because if there’s one thing I hate more than spies spilling their guts about state secrets that puts us all at risk, it’s people that ruin the plot of a drama through ‘spoilers’.
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Tony Boncza as Major Metcalf, Oliver Gully as Christopher Wren and Anna Andresen as Mollie Ralston in The Mousetrap. Credit Liza Maria Dawson[/caption]
And for sixty years now, theatre-goers from across the world have been keeping this secret. They are part of the ultimate anti-spoiler league and you would have to be very foolish indeed to cross them.
That’s right, The Mousetrap has been going for 60 years. That makes it the longest running show of any kind in the history of theatre, with over 25,000 performances.
That means this production has been going since 1956. A lot’s changed since then but when you enter the world of The Mousetrap it is like stepping into a time machine as you enter a post-war England of drawing rooms, the wireless and clipped BBC accents.
It is like stepping into the mind of Dame Agatha Christie. You half expect Miss Marple or Poirot to walk in at any moment. It really is classic Christie escapism as it places together a group of people with mixed pasts in a country house that is completely cut off from the outside world by a snow storm only to discover that there is a murderer in their midst.
And it is a proper whodunnit and an enjoyable romp of one too with larger than life characters keeping you in suspense until the very end.
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Lewis Collier Sgt Trotter and Anna Andresen as Mollie Ralston in the 60th Anniversary Tour of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Credit Liza Maria Dawson[/caption]
The audience itself is the detective as they try and piece together the clues to work out who did it. Who has the motive and who has the opportunity?
In her own inimitable style, Dame Agatha Christie has created an atmosphere of shuddering suspense and a brilliantly intricate plot where murder lurks around every corner.
Definitely a must-see whodunnit for any theatre aficionado.
And you also get to become a member of long-running ‘Keeping The Mousetrap Secret Club’.
What larks, what what!
