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Theatre history on a jubilee tour
The cast of The Mousetrap - suspects all. Picture:
Helen Maybanks
The Mousetrap
Lichfield Garrick
****
This was part
of a 60th anniversary tour, over 60 weeks, for a show still running in
its home theatre of St Martins in London, coincidentally almost
identical in capacity to the Garrick.
The Mousetrap
opened at The Ambassadors Theatre in 1952, with Richard Attenborough and
his film star wife, Sheila Sim, in the roles of Sgt.Trotter and
Mollie Ralston, the Proprietor of Monkswell Manor. The rest is history.
The Agatha Christie penned plot has a group of
people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow only to discover
that there is a murderer in their midst. A talented cast is led by
Jonathan Woolf as Sgt Trotter, with Hollyoaks’ Henry Luxemburg and
Joanna Croll as the newlywed owners of the newly-converted hotel.
Chris Gilling (ITV’s Law and Order, BBC1′s Silk)
is the mysterious army retiree Major Metcalf, while Michael Fenner
arrives as the foreign Mr Paravicini. Ryan Saunders entertains as the
camp Christopher Wren. the grouchy old woman magistrate Mrs Boyle is
gloriously grumpily played by Anne Kavanagh, Ellie Jacob is similarly
truculent as Miss Casewell.
Inevitably the question is how this play, now an
institution for its record run, and as British as Buckingham Palace,
stands up as a piece of drama? Is the myth greater than the reality? I
am pleased to report that it does stand on its own two feet, and in some
style.
It is a formulaic Christie murder mystery, there
are false leads, shocks, twists and turns, and some gentle humour, but
it works. Few guess the perpetrator at the end whose identity the cast
still ask us, the audience, to keep secret in this multimedia age.
Although the Whodunit is of its time on the stage, the genre is still
popular, now popularised to inject periodic drama into television soap
operas.
Director Ian Watt-Smith keep proceedings moving
briskly whilst the set oozes period charm. Drama and plays can be tough
sells at the theatre box office and it is to the Garricks’ credit that
it has taken the show for a week. The full house and memorable
production fully vindicate the original confidence shown.
The Mousetrap runs to 19-04-14
Gary Longden
14-04-14
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