Mousetrapped

I am mousetrapped.

Agatha Christie's Mousetrap is the world's longest running play, playing in London West End for last 55 years. Quite strange for a murder mystery, you would have thought that by now, the audience would have cracked the whodunit.

So here I am UK. Being a major Agatha Christie fan and a fan of live theater, I had to see this. So I dragged my lovely wife along to the matinée show as an anniversary treat [yes, that's my idea of romance :-) ]. I was expecting the theater to be empty and the performance to be just satisfactory, obviously expecting that the great actors would have moved on to the latest commercial successes and taken the audience along with them. To our pleasant surprise, here we were, watching the 22659th show of a play (see the photograph) and there still was a large enough audience. A further pleasant surprise was that we had bought the tickets for the upper circle, but the usher was chivalrous to my dear wife and found us a couple of seats in the front stalls. Too good.

But forget all that preamble. To have seen Mousetrap is an experience in itself. This is not a review of the play, for what can I say that has not been written already a thousand times. This is about my experience. First, for all those people who are not into live theater, get into it. The kind of involvement with the performance, the kind of connect of the cast with the audience that is achieved here is unparalleled.

So here we are, making small talk and waiting for the play to begin when suddenly, the whole theater goes dark. A lone voice on radio gives us a news that a murder has happened and the suspect has been seen wearing a gray overcoat, a dark scarf and a felt hat. One by one, the characters of the play keep on appearing, each wearing similar clothing. The plot unfolds gradually, and at every step, your mind is torn between following the clues/ red herrings dropped in the classical Agatha Christie style and observing the wonderful acting and expressions of the actors. Guessing the whodunit should not be too difficult for Christie die-hards, keeping yourself uninvolved and hence not falling for the red herrings will certainly be much more difficult.

I cannot tell you the story or the ending. According to tradition, during the final bows, the cast announces to the audience, "Having watched this, you are our partners in crime. So do not reveal the ending". Those of you lucky enough to be in London or near-abouts, do not miss this. Do not be bothered if you don't like murders or murder mysteries, Agatha Christie's were "crime-less murders", as a friend puts it, meaning that there is no violence or unpleasantness in the story.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying my status as being a "partner in crime".