13 September

On reaching its 1,998th performance, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap becomes Britain’s longest-running straight play

1957 It’s amazing to think that the record set way back in 1957 should have been surpassed by another 58 years and still counting; that both the Queen and the play should have celebrated their silver jubilees together, and that the production is still running in 2010 – well into the 21st century. By now, of course, it has set many more records: it is now the longest-running show of any kind in the universe, having gone through many changes of cast, a shift of venue (from The Ambassadors to St Martin’s, where it has played since 1974), and of course props and stage furniture – though not design. Only an old armchair and a clock on the wall date from the first production.

Not that the critics were all that excited about the play when it opened. Quoting Tallulah Bankhead that ‘there is less to it than meets the eye’, the Guardian objected that: ‘Coincidence is stretched unreasonably to assemble in one place a group of characters, each of whom may reasonably be suspected of murder in series.’ Still, the critic liked Richard Attenborough’s performance as Detective Sergeant Trotter, ‘an unconventional police sergeant on skis’, and thought ‘the whole thing whizzes along as though driven by some real dramatic force’.

It all started out as a 30-minute radio play broadcast in 1947. The scene is a country hotel in which a number of people are stranded by a snow storm. Christie’s adaptation for the stage allowed her more time to develop character and prolong suspense. All the characters have a secret, though only one of them a murderous one. There’s a twist in the ending – two, actually – which the audience are asked to swear they won’t divulge. Since the play has now been seen by well over ten million people in more than 40 countries, it’s not clear how much of the world’s population still doesn’t know the secret.

So how to account for the play’s evergreenery? Clever plotting, certainly, along with deft portrayal of character. A scenario, the country house murder mystery, so timeless that it’s still being used, or – in the case of Robert Altman’s superb film, Gosford Park (2001) – deconstructed. But by now it’s probably simply the fact that its longevity has turned the play into a phenomenon, a station on the tourist itinerary. In other words, The Mousetrap is famous for being famous.