Agatha Christie’s The mouse­trap is now in its six­ti­eth year of con­tin­u­ous pro­duc­tion. It opened in 1952 (1952!) and is quite pos­si­bly more famous for being famous now, rather than the qual­i­ty of the work. As part of the cel­e­bra­tions of the show’s longevi­ty, 60 pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions have been licensed around the world. The Aus­tralian pro­duc­tion is here in Welling­ton for a lim­it­ed time.

The grand draw­ing-room set is framed by the soft reds and golds of the St James the­atre. Into this space come Mol­lie and Giles Ral­ston (Christy Sul­li­van and Gus Mur­ray). They are open­ing their coun­try house to pay­ing cus­tomers. There’s Christo­pher Wren (Travis Cot­ton) a ‘pecu­liar’ young man, Mrs Boyle (Lin­da Crop­per) in a bad tem­per and nit-picky about every­thing, Major Met­calf (Nicholas Hope) very upright and mil­i­tary, and Miss Casewell (Jac­in­ta John), a self-assured young woman. As the weath­er gets worse they are joined by Mr Par­avici­ni (Robert Alexan­der) who has run his Rolls Royce into a snow drift. Final­ly Detec­tive Sergeant Trot­ter (Justin Smith) arrives and the fun real­ly begins. There has been a mur­der and the Sergeant has rea­son to believe some of the indi­vid­u­als in the house are in dan­ger.

All the cos­tumes are gor­geous­ly tai­lored (paired with ter­ri­ble shoes.) The set is delight­ful — part­ly because of the scale of it. Strange­ly the house was lit dur­ing the play. (This may have been spill from the stage lights, I’m not sure.) There are many red her­rings and por­ten­tous utter­ances in this play. It felt almost like a pan­tomime in that it invit­ed the audi­ence to ‘ooo’ and *gasp* at the per­for­mances.  At the end of the play we were asked to keep the secret of who­dun­nit. It’s a love­ly con­ceit that con­nects us to all the audi­ences who have seen it before. As a fan of the Gold­en Age of detec­tive fic­tion I enjoyed myself great­ly.

  • The Mouse­trap by Agatha Christie, on at St James The­atre to 24 Novem­ber 2012.