The Mousetrap, the longest running play in the world

This isn’t about film, although people have tried to make films of it. (They can’t until the play ends, and it never has.) It’s about Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, the longest running murder mystery and theatrical play in the world. I caught it a week ago at London’s St. Martin’s Theatre (photo) in the West End. It’s one of those events that just begs for attending, such an iconic play staged in the middle of the city’s teeming theatre district. But to be honest, I had some reservations before going and had never checked it out on previous London visits, largely because I thought it was too cliched, pedestrian or touristy. It may be touristy – the Thursday matinee I attended was almost packed – but I was glad to have seen it, and in English parlance, it was a jolly good time. (The price was also reasonable compared to other West End productions - about 15 Pound or $30 Cad). Arriving at the vintage 1916 theatre on West St., a block off Charing Cross Rd. and just up from Leicester Sq., the audience was treated to live piano renditions of standards and vaudeville – how appropriate. Every year The Mousetrap changes its cast in late November, so I was treated to a fresh group of actors. The play is in two acts with an intermission. (I only learned later that the bar has a board indicating what number production this is; by last February it had run 29,500 times.) There are eight players and one virtual performer, a recorded voice reading the news on the radio by one of the original actors of the 1952 production. The play has never had many well-known actors, but Richard Attenborough was among its original cast. But this contingent was certainly good and kept the suspense going. The story all takes place in a country boarding house with a group of oddball guests who, of course, each has a reason to be the murderer, according to the investigating detective. Half the fun is watching the idiosyncratic personalities - an irritating complainer, a foreign dandy, a fey artist, a suffragette, a stiff-necked retired army major, and the two proprietors, a seemingly normal married couple. I was also expecting to be bored but wasn’t. The staging almost had a camp aspect likely because of the play’s long history, iconic status and engraved stereotypes. Nevertheless, it was fun all around and at the end the audience applauded loudly and even cheered. As the cast took their bows we were advised, as per tradition, to never reveal the ending of the whodunnit. My lips are sealed.