Review: Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap 70th Anniversary Tour at The Lyceum, Sheffield

It’s alright – the butler didn’t do it. There isn’t even a butler in it. Todd Carty – best known as Mark Fowler in EastEnders – is in it, as the amiable, blustering, moustachioed Major Metcalf, alongside Catherine Shipton, Duffy from Casualty, as the crisply critical, curmudgeonly Mrs Boyle.

There are red herrings and humour in it too, some mildly thought-provoking ‘trust no-one’ psychodrama, and a nice touch after the end, when the actors take their bows then remind the audience we’re their partners in crime now, in on theatre’s longest-running whodunnit, a secret we must not tell.

There is another secret we probably shouldn’t tell: The Mousetrap – in Sheffield until Saturday, as part of a huge 70th anniversary UK tour – isn’t exactly Agatha Christie’s greatest work.

The Queen of Crime – who never claimed to write great literature, but professed merely to ‘entertain’ – pretty much said so herself, when offering her own analysis on the show’s enduring appeal.

“It is the sort of play you can take anyone to,” she said. “It’s not really frightening. It’s not really horrible. It’s not really a farce. But it has a little of all these things and perhaps that satisfies a lot of different people.”

Neither of her most legendary detectives, Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple, feature. It lacks the simple ingenuity of, say, The ABC Murders or the stylistic mystery-writing twist of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Compared to the cinematographically-stunning TV and film adaptations of Christie’s canon, the one room set is staid.

But the warm, cosy, furnishings against the cold snow-flurries through the leaded window are comfortingly evocative of early 1950s England. The costumes are a subtle palette of autumnal colours that look beautiful against the wood-panelled walls of Monkswell Manor. The clipped dialogue and cut-glass sounds of the wireless are a nostalgic treat.

As news spreads of a woman strangled 30 miles away in London, a group of five visitors – every one in the glimpsed description of the killer: a dark overcoat, pale scarf, and soft felt hat – find themselves snowed in at a remote guesthouse run by newlyweds Mollie and Giles Ralston.

In a truly ensemble piece, where everyone is a suspect, Shaun McCourt is delicious as exuberant lost boy Christopher Wren and Steven Elliott comically sinister as the vampiric Mr Paravicini, happy to play up his own foreign otherness as the characters discover there’s a killer in their midst, and someone is about to become the next victim.

The Mousetrap was written originally as a short radio play called Three Blind Mice as an 80th birthday present for Queen Mary. Five years later that play formed the basis of The Mousetrap which had its world premiere in October 1952 and opened in the West End a month later.

And there it remains to this day, at the St Martin’s Theatre, performed over 29,000 times and having sold over 10 million tickets.

But while the victim remains elusive for much of the first half, and the identity of the killer for most of the second, what does become apparent as the play unfolds is that the secret to The Mousetrap’s longevity is simply that.

It has been running so long now, how could it ever end? Who would be brave – or commercially foolish – enough to bring down the curtain on over 70 years of theatre history? And so it trundles on. A sit-back and enjoy it evening of gentle entertainment, a must-see if you haven’t already, a pleasurable night out in the capable hands of the biggest-selling fiction writer the world has ever known.

n Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap 70th Anniversary Tour is at the Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday, June 3.