The Mousetrap is a play by Agatha Christie that started off as a short radio play called Three Blind Mice in honour of Queen Mary, the consort of King George V.
History
The world's longest running play of any kind, The Mousetrap is a whodunit. The original Mousetrap was a 30-minute radio play, Three Blind Mice, presented by the BBC in honor of the late Queen Mary's 80th birthday, in 1947. On November 25, 1952, The Mousetrap was first performed on stage in England, starring Richard Attenborough and his wife, Sheila Sim.
It began a record-shattering run on the London stage at the New Ambassadors Theatre and has clocked up over 20,000 performances. It is still running to date (2006) at St Martin's Theatre. A staging at the Toronto Truck Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, that opened on 19 August 1977 became Canada's longest running show. It finally closed on 18 January 2004 after a run of twenty-six and a half years and over 9,000 performances (though some Toronto tourist websites still list it as open).
The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London. It has still not been published as a book within the United Kingdom, but the script is available. Under the contract terms of the play, no film adaptation can be produced until the West End production has been closed for at least six months.
When she wrote the play, Christie gave the rights to her grandson Mathew Prichard as a birthday present. Prichard currently owns the rights to all of her works.
More than 10 million people have seen the classic murder mystery since it opened and the play has been performed in more than 40 countries and been translated into over 20 languages. Only a leather chair and the mantle clock have appeared in every show performed in London since 1952. The West End's most famous whodunit opened at the Ambassadors Theatre and transferred to St. Martins Theatre where it has become something of a national institution -- as popular with tourists as Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Agatha Christie has said of the play, "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 people."
Since the death of David Raven, who made history as the most durable actor for his 4575 performances as Major Metcalfe, the cast has been changed annually. The change usually occurs around November, and was the initiative of Sir Peter Saunders, the original producer. There is a tradition of the retiring leading lady and the new leading lady cutting the "Mousetrap cake" together.
By tradition, audiences are asked not to reveal the identity of the killer to anyone outside the theatre at the end of each performance.
In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, "The Mousetrap" is Hamlet's answer to Claudius's inquiry about the name of the play whose prologue and first scene the court has just observed (III, ii). The play is actually The Murder of Gonzago, but Hamlet answers ironically, since "the play's the thing..." in which he intends to "catch the conscience of the king."
Short plot overview
The story is about a young couple, Mollie and Giles Ralston, who have started up a new hotel in the converted Monkswell Manor. They are snowed in together with four guests and an additional traveller, who ran his car into a snowdrift. Detective Sergeant Trotter arrives on skis to inform the group that he believes a murderer is on his way to the hotel, following the death of Mrs. Maureen Lyon in London. When one of the guests is killed, they realize that the murderer is already there. Although the suspicion falls first on Christopher Wren, an erratic young man who fits the description of the supposed murderer, it quickly transpires that the killer could be any one of the guests, or even the hosts themselves. In the end, Sergeant Trotter assembles everyone in the dining room with the plan to set a trap for one of the guests.