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Canberra Today 19°/23° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: Mystery of the ‘Mousetrap’

Inspector Trotter interrogates guests at Monkswell Manor
YOU can fairly bet that the bulk of the audience, packed to the rafters in the Playhouse last night for Agatha Christie’s “the Mousetrap”, were there less to find out whodunit than why this play is so famous.

That’s the biggest mystery of all.

It can’t be the plot, which as Agatha Christie murders go is rather clunky, with a curiously soft-pedal climax and flat dénouement. Indeed, for such a celebrated stage play, the chills and thrills come all too infrequently in one audience member sitting near me had worked out who the murderer was before the interval.

It can’t be the fabulous costume and hair designs by Suzy Strout, although, in evoking the ’50s they were a pleasure to behold and well-matched by the fine period acting of the professional cast and the elaborately detailed set of Linda Bewick.

And despite claims by the English producer Stephen Waley-Cohen and that it deals with abused children, there isn’t even much of the social acuity for which Christie was known.

No, the secret of “The Mousetrap” is in the characterisation.

Teetering on the brink of comedy for the whole night, the play presents a group of sharply contrasting characters snow-bound in an old manor house, unable to escape from each other as the telephone lines are cut off and the snow falls relentlessly.

Among the stranger characters are the curmudgeonly Mrs Boyle, (Linda Cropper) the enthusiastic young man Christopher Wren, (Travis Cotton) the make-up wearing Mr Paravicini, (Robert Alexander) and the manly Miss Casewell (Jacinta John). These are all finely judged performances, occasionally, as with Alexander and John, on extravagant side, but that adds to the fun.

On the other side are the “straight” characters, Major Metcalfe, (Nicholas Hope) Giles Ralston (Gus Murray) and his wife Mollie (Christie Solomon) and the investigator, Detective Sgt Trotter.

It makes an attractive mix, with all the actors taking their characters very seriously, while working very hard to be ostentatiously English and hitting the right note with perfect comic timing.

My reservations about “The Mousetrap” are not to do with this production, which is deservedly packing them in, but with the play itself. It didn’t frighten me, and it didn’t keep me guessing.

Gus Murray and Christy Sullivan as Giles and Mollie Ralston

 

 

 

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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