Shotgun Players celebrate the season with murder
In 1969 on a European trip I saw a play in London that had been running continuously there for seventeen years.
Fast forward forty six years later, to 2015, and it’s still packing ‘em in in the shadow of Big Ben. That’s more than half a century, sixty-three years to be exact.
It could be argued that the play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, is nearly as big a tourist attraction as Big Ben. Is it a good play? Will Shakespeare it ain’t and it ain’t Harold Pinter either, but when you experience it, as you can right now in a crisp, spiffing production at Shotgun Players, you know exactly why it’s lasted so long–it offers, in spades, the delicious pleasures of a good murder mystery, complete with isolated country house, Monkswell Manor, peopled by a cast of potential victims and plausible suspects. It features mysterious clues and ingenious misdirection, as Detective Sergeant Trotter, who has skied through a snowstorm to bring succor to the trapped and justice to a killer, arrives with dire news.
The radio has been broadcasting some of that news for a while: a grisly murder in London, possibly perpetrated by a “homicidal maniac.” Breathlessly Trotter informs the young innkeepers, Mollie and Giles Ralston, and their five varied guests, that a note referencing the nursery song, “Three Blind Mice,” points to Monkswell Manor is the site of the next murder.
The first of the mice has been dispatched, in other words, with two more to go.
The Shotgun production, smartly directed by Patrick Dooley, is wonderfully satisfying, featuring just the right sly winks at a willingly complicit audience that knows it’s there for entertaining mystification and that after the thrills are over, all the ingenious knots will be cleverly untied.
On the list of praise, perhaps the greatest should go to set designer Mark Hueske, who has constructed a marvelous, detailed labyrinth of a mansion, with a long staircase, big windows looking out onto the snow, and so many doorways I could hardly count them–perfect for the darting comings and goings that mark the action. He’s well abetted by properties designer, Megan Hillard. Huelske also provided the lighting design, punctuated by ominous blackouts, while Matt Stines did the sound and Valera Coble dressed the cast in just-right costumes.
That cast is slyly precise, adding tiny amusing twists to each part (they know as well as we do that they’re not playing King Lear). As Christopher Wren, Nick Medina is juicily over the top. The ever-welcome Trish Mulholland is very Agatha Christie in the role of the sniffy dowager, Mrs. Boyle, as is is David Siniako as stolid Major Metcalf (how could we have a Christie show without a British major?). Alex Rodriguez is wonderfully weird as the twittering Mr. Paravicini. Karen Offereins is quietly magnetic as the butch Miss Casewell. Playing Giles and Mollie Ralston, Mick Mize and Megan Trout are agreeably sane and solid–until they begin to come undone. As Detective Sergeant Trotter, Adam Magill is a reassuringly straight arrow cop, focused on the task at hand. We can count on him to know just what needs to be done.
A smartly produced entertainment, The Mousetrap plays at the Ashby Stage until January 24th. For tickets/information call 841-6500 or visit shotgunplayers.org.
–ROBERT HALL