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The Mousetrap
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
**** THE
Mousetrap
comes back to the Belgrade ‘by popular demand’ as part of the Diamond
Anniversary Tour. Agatha
Christie herself said this play would last eight months in the West End
but it has broken all records. It first
appeared in 1952 – older than me! It creaks a bit (as do I), but even
with the whiff of red herrings and moth balls, it doesn’t disappoint. The
doyenne of whodunits Agatha Christie is as popular as ever and it’s
basically a brilliantly gripping story engagingly and entertainingly
told. There’s no
Poirot or Miss Marple but it still works well and Miss Christie herself
explains its endurance with the fact that it’s a play that anyone can
enjoy. Nothing really nasty happens. Mrs Boyle, the nit-picking
magistrate who sent the children to the farm in the first place, gets
her comeuppance. In a
saga of child abuse that sadly remains contemporary. The surviving
children of Longridge Farm that nestles next to the newly opened
Monkswell Hall Guest House avenge the death of their little brother at
the hands of their cruel adoptive parents. The
leit motif of
the nursery rhyme tune Three Blind Mice
becomes a haunting refrain as the murderer seeks revenge. Guests
arrive in quick succession during a blizzard at the Edwardian pile
(great set!) of newly married hostess Mollie Ralston (Esther McAuley)
and husband Giles (Alex Wadham): energetic but possibly unbalanced
Christopher Wren (a very watchable Edward Elgood), pompous know-all Mrs
Boyle (Anne Kavanagh), steady Major Metcalfe (William Ilkley), and
elegant but uncooperative young Miss Casewell (Hester Arden). Then Mr
Paravacini (Jonathan Sidgwick) an unexpected guest arrives who claims to
have rolled his Roller into a ditch. The phone
rings to announce the arrival of the police after a shock murder in
London of the adoptive mother of said children. Sergeant Trotter (Luke
Jenkins) appears through the window complete with skis. Someone has cut
the phone lines! No one is
telling anyone of their involvement in anything . . . but everyone is
suspicious of everyone else. And their dwindling respect for each other,
the death of annoying Mrs Boyle, under the Sergeant’s nose, puts a
colossal strain on the household’s jangling nerves. It’s clever,
compulsive and compelling and of course I’m not saying who dunit . . . .
it’s more than my life’s worth. The Mousetrap, directed by Ian
Watt-Smith runs so 14-11-15 Jane Howard
09-11-15
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