Word: mousetrap
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...IDIOSYNCRATIC guests snowbound in a manor house outside of London with their nervous host and hostess, an unsolved murder mystery, the haunting refrain of a childish nursery rhyme--these are the ingredients Agatha Christie uses to bait The Mousetrap. A lot of people have been snatching up the bait; the show has broken box office records, running 23 years on the London stage...
...Agatha Christie, murder reduces to an elegant picture puzzle, which audience and characters simultaneously try to piece together. When the overintense detective in The Mousetrap insists that "murder isn't fun and games," he's clearly wrong, and Evangeline Morphos, who directed the Leverett House production, fortunately knows...
Morphos directs The Mousetrap so as to wring the maximum possible number of laughs from a fairly silly script. In the process, she necessarily subordinates the unwinding of the plot to the peculiarities of the characters who inhabit Agatha Christie's strangely isolated world...
Nevertheless, a less light-hearted production of The Mousetrap might well have lapsed into maudlin sentimentality or self-importance. Agatha Christie just can't be taken too seriously, especially since in this specific play, she is poking fun at the conventions of the murder mystery genre, including her own work. At one point, for instance, she has Detective Sergeant Trotter--himself an insane parody of crime-fighting zeal--ask the other characters to reconstruct the crime. "Oh, that old chestnut," Mr. Paravicini sneers...
...Mousetrap. The Leverett House Arts Society's production of an Agatha Christie murder mystery about eight people snow-bound in a manor house. Check it out if you haven't caught it in London yet, where it's been running continuously for the last 23 years or so. Directed by Evangeline Morphos, who did Arms and the Man at the Loeb last year. Performances in the Leverett House Old Library Theater October 30 and 31, and November 1,2, 5-8, at 8 p.m. Special Halloween performance at midnight...