The Mousetrap
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- For more meanings, see mousetrap (disambiguation).
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.
It began a record-shattering run on the London stage on 25 November 1952 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.
The original West End cast included Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim.
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.
The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London.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.
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."
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