The Mousetrap
Theatre Royal Bath
THE 36 years that the Victorian melodrama The Drunkard ran in Los Angeles, and 42 years that the musical The Fantasticks was resident off-Broadway, pale into insignificance when you compare their records to Agatha Christie’s whodunit The Mousetrap.
Apart from a forced break because of Covid, the play, first at the Ambassadors and then St Martin’s Theatre, has been continually seen in London’s West End for 70 years.
It would be unthinkable to impose great changes on such a national treasure, and the setting and costumes for this 70th anniversary tour place the play firmly in the early 1950s, when it was originally presented.
Compared to many past productions, co-directors Ian Talbot and Denise Silvey have tweaked the style just a little, putting a slightly greater emphasis on the comedy within Agatha Christie’s script.
And Denise Silvey, who was also responsible for casting the play, has assembled a cast who are more than capable and very willing to go down that road.
In doing so, apart from those moments when Joseph Reed’s otherwise excellent Det Sgt Trotter becomes a little too frenetic in his delivery, none of the tension so essential to a murder mystery is undermined.
Although Agatha Christie never claimed to be a great writer in the classical style, her characters are always recognisable and believable, and the eight people – one of them a deranged murderer – stranded by heavy snow in an isolated West Country guesthouse are no exception to this rule.
Joelle Dyson and Laurence Pears, as Mollie and Giles Ralston, newlywed, madly in love, owners of the guesthouse, begin to doubt one another as tensions rise.
Their first guest is the insecure Christopher Wren, played with complete confidence by understudy Jack Elliot, followed by Gwyneth Strong’s bitter former magistrate Mrs Boyle, a far cry from her portrayal of Cassandra in Only Fools and Horses.
The same can be said of John Altman, whose mysterious Italian Mr Paravicini was light years away from EastEnders’ Nick Cotton, and Todd Carty’s splendid bluff, I suspect exIndian Army, Major Metcalf, who bares about as much resemblance to the much-loved Tucker Jenkins from Grange Hill as the Prime Minister does to the Leader of the Opposition.
Compared to these veterans Essie Barrow is very much the new kid on the block, but more than holds her own as the obviously not what she at first appears Miss Casewell.
Which one is the murderer? Like all of the many millions who have seen The Mousetrap, I am sworn to secrecy, so a visit to Bath’s Theatre Royal is indicated if you want to know the answer to that question.
The Mousetrap is at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday. To book tickets visit www.theatreroyal.org. uk