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.