Can the best-kept twist in theatre stump Nottingham crowds?
Just before the start of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit, there was an announcement that there had been a death. This wasn’t part of the play but the tragic news that Sheila Sim had passed away aged 93. Sheila Sim starred as Mollie Ralston in the world premiere of The Mousetrap at the Theatre Royal in October 1952. The play also featured her husband Dickie Attenborough. The evening’s performance was dedicated to the late actress.
The curtain pulled back to reveal a wood-panelled sitting room, roaring fire, and snow falling past a window. Lovely and snug… but isolated. Welcome to Monkswell Manor, a newly opened hotel run by a recently married couple called Giles and Mollie Ralston (Nick Barclay and Anna Andresen). Today is their grand opening and it’s destined not to go to plan. The stage is slowly filled with eight archetypal Christie characters, allowing various conflicts and suspicions to arise.
Louise Jameson plays Mrs Boyle, a right stroppy madam whose main pleasure in life is picking fault with her new surroundings. She is immediately put out with the hotel when she discovers it doesn’t have serving staff. This is a woman of exacting standards.
Oliver Gully plays the excitable fop Christopher Wren - imagine Bertie Wooster with a few deep-rooted anxieties. He is positively thrilled by the latent danger as it unfolds, but could his inability to grasp his circumstances make him a suspect in the ensuing murder case? Who cares, he’s got the best tanktop on I’ve ever seen.
Amy Downham plays the confident and cutting Miss Casewell, Gregory Cox is Mr Paravicini, the exotic and eccentric ‘foreigner’ who hams it up perfectly to wind-up his fellow guests and as is obligatory in a Christie play, and we have a Major, played by Tony Boncza. Major Metcalf appears to be a bit of a blustering buffoon but is this just show to hide more sinister intentions?
Once the personalities of the cast have been established, a sergeant from the local police force (Lewis Collier) turns up. Due to the snow storm outside he’s had to ski over. He believes a recent murder may be linked to the current guests and that some of them are in grave danger. Thus, the guessing game begins…
This is a superbly acted play and very well cast. I did manage to guess the killer but I didn’t see another twist coming towards the very end of the play. Yes, Christie may be a bit formulaic in places but she knows her genre well. By the time of her death in January 1976 she was only beaten in sales by the Bible and Willy Shakespeare. Quite simply, this is good old fashioned fun. Most enjoyable, and you don’t say this often at the theatre, was hearing the muffled whispers of couples as they applied their own skills of detection.
The Mousetrap is at the Nottingham Theatre Royal until Saturday 23 Januray 2016.
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