Enduring Christie Mystery In York

You would think by now it would be an open secret who did it – especially since The Mousetrap, one of theatre’s most enduring institutions, has been touring on and off for almost decade. Apparently not - and, if like this critic who was on his fourth performance, you do know, it doesn’t seem to greatly detract from the pleasure.

One of the most tightly-plotted and adroit examples of the ever-popular murder mystery genre, by the ‘Queen of crime-writers’, Agatha Christie, it began running in London in November 1952, having actually received its world premier at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, a few weeks earlier. The actual sixtieth anniversary of the very first London performance, at the Ambassadors Theatre, actually, coincided with press night at the Bradford Alhambra, in 2012, when I last saw it and reviewed it. Apart from a complete change of cast and a slight widening of the accents nothing much has changed.

So many years on and having provided employment for more than 450 actors in the course of thousands of performances, the play – currently directed by Gareth Armstrong - undoubtedly retains its capacity to captivate and shock even the most sophisticated of modern audiences well versed in double bluffs and red herrings, twists and counter-twists.

It is difficult to imagine that too many people at the play’s inception could conceive of it running so long. There was nothing very original about the stock characters, snow-bound in an English country manor house. Their conversation is shallow. In place of psychological depth, they merely have mystery and mechanical eccentricity.

We wonder why, for example, the irascible widow and terrible snob, Mrs Boyle, played against type in curmudgeonly fashion by Gwyneth Strong, seems to be going out of her way to alienate everybody, without fear or favour. In modern parlance, she needs to get a life.

When the lights go out and someone meets their doom, the game’s afoot, and fortunately there just happens to be policeman in the house who has seemingly been tipped off something is about to strike. Geoff Arnold plays Detective Sergeant Trotter with a somewhat manic air, suspecting everybody, even the least likely. Still we perceive a certain method in his madness as one by one, in classic fashion, he shifts through the possible suspects, all of whom seem culpably unco-operative.

One clear early favourite is undoubtedly Lewis Chandler’s impossibly limp Christopher Wren, originally the silly ass stock character with the silly ass name but in modern times now played as a little more fay. He certainly considers himself under suspicion and cuts an abject figure, in total contrast to his earlier frolicsome self. This in itself intensifies our doubts about him. It could well be him, we think.

Then there’s the retired army officer, Major Metcalf, played up to snuff by John Griffiths. Yet, this army man, tweedy and unbending, might not be all he seems as he pokes about in odd corners of the house for no apparent reason. Mark him down as a possible. But then the same could even be said about the Ralstons, the couple who own the manor and are taking in paying guests for the first time. Mollie, perhaps the most sweetly sympathetic character, the English rose as embodied by Harriett Hare, is so nervy that maybe she’s got something to hide, even though we never want to believe it of so pretty a face. Nick Biadon adds a slightly sinister undertone to many of her husband Giles’s indignant outbreaks. It wouldn’t surprise us if he turned out to be involved in it somehow …

Strangely, the most obviously fake character, the foreigner Mr. Paravicini, whose name sort of very roughly translates from the Italian as ‘in the neighbourhood’ and who has, indeed, simply wandered in out of the snow, probably incites our suspicions the least, on the ground that no one so obviously lacking all those sterling British qualities so highly esteemed in the previous age could actually be the villain. Wouldn’t it be much too obvious? Or could this be another double bluff, we wonder, as he continues to specialise in being irritatingly nonconformist and unBritish.

Finally, there’s Miss Casewell, played by Saskia Vaigncourt-Strallen, unusually in trousers for the period and got up in a waistcoat and necktie, who hardly makes much of a secret of the fact she’s got a secret - and who seems to know much more about the secrets of others than she should, bearing in mind she’s supposed to have been living abroad for the last ten years. Motiveless as she appears, we quickly decide not to rule her out while our ‘little grey cells’ are working overtime on the assembled suspects.

Remarkably the biggest secret, who did it, has pretty much endured even in these Googling times, and there was an audible gasp when, eventually, after many a false climax, the truth was at last out. It was pretty much the same reaction as when I first saw the play in London nearly fifty years ago, again twenty years later and lastly in 2012. Such pregnant silence speaks volumes for the particular, peculiar, almost indefinable hold still exerted by The Mousetrap. It also suggests it may well survive for the foreseeable future and without the usual modernising makeover that directors specialise in these day.

Why should it not run and run? It now carries the charm of a period piece. There is something so strong and serviceable about everything, from the heavily dark and solidly baronial set to the austerity post-war costumes made to last a lifetime. From the wireless, a dependable, old-fashioned Bush that glows in the dark, we get news items in the clipped Broadcasting House tones of the Home Service; from the Light Programme, we catch nostalgic snatches of Donald Peers, Max Miller, Valentine Dyall’s Man In Black. It’s all so redolent of that time when the country had won the war and still believed in the old certainties. The plot is so water-tight you can’t claim to have been cheated in any way. Once the culprit has been unmasked we actually realise how dashed decent the exonerated ones have been.

Yes, it’s thoroughly good middle-brow entertainment: don’t miss it and mum’s the word!

The Mousetrap is at York Grand Opera House until 25th May.