Word: mousetrap
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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...
...very least, then, this Mousetrap entertains, in large part due to the exertions of a talented cast. The first act rushes breathlessly by, with each character in succession making his appearance and promptly revealing his own brand of madness. While the quickness of the first act sometimes seems forced, the natural momentum of events whirls the second act on to a satisfactory--if not stunning--conclusion...