The original stage whodunit still has the power to surprise
The Mousetrap
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
until May 18
The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running play. It premiered in 1952 and this current tour is part of its 70th anniversary celebrations. It’s a murder mystery, much like writer Agatha Christie’s prodigious novel output. The dramatic power lies in an invitation to the audience to solve a puzzle. I have never seen it before; as it seemed to be running forever, it never felt like an urgent thing to do.
The play is set in a guest house in Berkshire. A murder has been committed in London, and there is information that there will soon be a related second murder in the guesthouse; a detective sergeant is sent to interrogate the five guests and the husband and wife proprietors. During a blackout, someone gets killed. It’s the middle of a snowstorm and nobody can come or go. So who did it?
The play has a solid, conventional shape. It unfolds in real time in a single room with several entrances and exits. The murders arise from a decades-old old case where three siblings were abused in foster care, one of whom died. Has another traumatised sibling come back for revenge? It’s a very contemporary-feeling storyline.
Directed by Ian Talbot and Denise Silvey, everything moves like clockwork, including the chimes that mark the passing of the hour. The performances are all slickly finetuned. Steven Elliott is funny and sinister as the exotic, suspicious, Mr Paravicini. Hollie Sullivan is a strong presence as the guesthouse proprietor Mollie Ralston. And Judith Rae is a wonderfully cranky Mrs Boyle, a retired magistrate who feels every draft in the old manor house
When the plot twist comes at the end, it takes me by surprise. Clever Christie gives you plenty of reason to suspect each and every one of them. At the curtain, the guilty character exhorts the audience to keep the plot spoiler to themselves. This is a charming aspect of the show; an invitation to a conspiracy.
The whodunit as a story-shape has been making a comeback in the cinema in recent times, attracting prestige actors to films like Knives Out. But the stage show of The Mousetrap is the mothership, and contains every necessary ingredient. It may feel old fashioned, but that is because it is a bona fide piece of theatre history; a live demonstration of how a compelling story can be converted into boxoffice gold over decades of time.