Lifestyle Event

The Mousetrap Event date:2011-09-02

The Mousetrap at the St. Martin'sTheatre, London
Agatha Christie thriller, the world's longest running stage play

Going to see The Mousetrap can often be found high on a tourist's to-do list, as its astonishing fifty-seven year run has made it one of London theatre’s most important institutions.

The Mousetrap started life as a half hour long radio play commissioned in 1947 in honour of the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary. Loosely based upon the true story of Dennis O'Neill, a Welsh boy who died at the hands of his foster parents in 1945, Christie's play Three Blind Mice made a short tour of Britain in 1952 before settling at the Ambassadors Theatre. The play then had to change its name due to another show called Three Blind Mice having been staged in London only a few years before, and Christie's son-in-law provided the name The Mousetrap.

The Mousetrap is the classic whodunit, with eight eccentric characters snowed in at a remote guesthouse, where only the murder victim is above suspicion, and at the end of each performance, the audience are sworn to secrecy. This tradition has for years been the butt of jokes (Paul Merton once revealed the outcome at the end of a television show), but there is no denying it has kept people coming as it will undoubtedly continue to do.

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