PRESS KIT
UK TOUR 2016
PRESS REPRESENTATIVES
The Corner Shop PR
36 Great Queen Street
London
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T: 020 7831 7657
Sara Sherwood
Laurence Ainscough
PRESS KIT CONTENTS
Synopsis
Familiar faces discuss Agatha Christie
Facts about The Mousetrap
Syndicated Interview with Mathew Prichard
Cast Biographies
Character Biographies
The Mousetrap/Agatha Christie Quiz
Press Angles and Photocall Ideas
Context and History
Agatha Christie’s Enduring Appeal
SYNOPSIS
The play is set in the Great Hall of Monkswell Manor, in what Christie described as "the present".
Act I opens with the murder of a woman in London, played out in sound only on a dark stage. The action then moves to Monkswell Manor, recently converted to guesthouse run by a young couple, Mollie and Giles Ralston. Their first four guests arrive: Christopher Wren, Mrs. Boyle, Major Metcalf and Miss Casewell. Mrs. Boyle complains about everything, and Giles offers to cancel her stay, but she refuses the offer. They become snowed in together and read of the murder in the newspaper . An additional traveller, Mr. Paravicini, arrives stranded after he ran his car into a snowdrift, but he makes his hosts uneasy.
In the next scene, the imposing Mrs. Boyle complains to the other guests, first to Metcalf and then to Miss Casewell, who both try to get away from her. Wren comes into the room claiming to have fled Mrs. Boyle in the library. Shortly afterwards, the police call on the phone, creating great alarm amongst the guests. Mrs. Boyle suggests that Mollie check Wren's references. Detective Sergeant Trotter arrives on skis to inform the group that he believes a murderer is at large and on his way to the hotel, following the death of Mrs Maureen Lyon in London. When Mrs Boyle is killed, they realise that the murderer is already there.
Act II opens ten minutes later, where the investigation is ongoing. Each character is scrutinised and suspected. Mollie and Giles get into a fight, and Chris Wren and Giles argue over who should protect Mollie. Suspicion falls first on Christopher Wren, an erratic young man who fits the description of the supposed murderer. However, it quickly transpires that the killer could be any one of the guests, or even the hosts themselves. The characters re-enact the second murder, trying to prevent a third.
At last, Sergeant Trotter assembles everyone in the hall with the plan to set a trap for one of the suspects.The play builds towards a twist ending as Sergeant Trotter sends the other characters to different rooms to re-enact one another's testimonies.
FAMILIAR FACES DISCUSS AGATHA CHRISTIE
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ (on The Hollow): “a strange, poignant book; these are deep waters, with powerful undercurrents.”
KATE MOSSE: “I read all of Agatha Christie on a rotating basis. She was a revolutionary writer; one of the first to make the detective story accessible, with clean, easy prose.”
GENE WILDER: “I like period murder mystery shows like Poirot [and] Marple”
ROLAND BARTHES: “Brilliant”
BILLY WILDER: “Extraordinary”
JOHN MORTIMER: “…fascinated by Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’”
COLM TOIBIN: “I had read all of Agatha Christie by the time I was 10”
A.N. WILSON: “Time and again she pulled off what many obviously greater writers laboured for in vain, a work of art which is both perfectly crafted and morally satisfying.”
NANCY BANKS SMITH: "Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman."
DAVID TANG: “I like Agatha Christie’s writing. I read her books to build up my fluency in English”
SIR RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH: “Agatha Christie is very, very clever indeed.”
STELLA DUFFY: Then I found Miss Marple – and, at the age of eight, made a little old woman with Victorian lace mittens my role model.
VAL MCDERMID: It’s all sleight of hand. And the quickness of Christie’s hand still continues to deceive our eyes, all those years later.” (Introduction to Seven Dials Mystery, Harper/Collins UK)
PAUL HOGGART, The Times/ The Eye:“It’s like picking up an Agatha Christie. Each episode is different yet elegantly funny in the same clever way.”
ANTONIA FRASER, New York Times: “Agatha Christie is a phenomenon, since her worldwide popularity, far from fading after her death at the age of 85, is actually on the increase.”
DYLAN THOMAS: “Anyway (poetry) is not the most important thing in life, is it? Frankly, I'd must rather lie in a hot bath sucking boiled sweets and reading Agatha Christie, which is justexactly what I intend to do as soon as I get home.”
TERRY WOGAN: “Very little high-quality TV drama is made at all anymore, so my wife Helen and I go for the golden oldies. We tune in to Poirot on the digital channels. We’ve probably seen each one 50 times, but they’re so brilliantly made, and David Suchet is just magnificent. The same goes for Miss Marple – the real one of course, with Joan Hickson.”
IAN RANKIN: “The thing about Agatha Christie is she has done it all. She has got books where everybody did it, nobody did it, the narrator did it, every possible eventuality. Christie was the beginning and the end of the crime novel.”
JOANNA HARRIS (Chocolat) said at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2010 that she didn’t know that Agatha Christie was English until she was fourteen: her grandfather had her complete works in French and she’d read them all by the time she was ten or eleven.
FACTS ABOUT THE MOUSETRAP
When The Mousetrap opened on 25th November 1952 with Richard Attenborough and his fellow film-star and beloved wife Sheila Sim in the leading roles, it was only seven years since Hitler died. Much essential food was still rationed, Mr Winston Churchill was Prime Minister, Harry Truman was President of the United States, and Stalin was ruler of Russia. There was fighting in Korea, and Princess Elizabeth began her long reign as Queen. The last tram ran in London, television programmes ended at 10.30 p.m., and the entire TV listings only occupied three and a half lines.
On 25 November 2002, The Mousetrap celebrated its golden jubilee with a Birthday Gala performance attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. Lord (Richard) Attenborough gave the famous curtain speech exactly 50 years since he first delivered it in London: “Now you have seen The Mousetrap you are our partners in crime, and we ask you to preserve the tradition by keeping the secret of whodunit locked in your hearts.”
In November 2012 Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, welcomed the audience to the Diamond Jubilee celebratory evening, which was also the 25,000th performance of The Mousetrap. All of the proceeds from the night were donated to Mousetrap Theatre Projects, the leading theatre education charity seed-funded by the play. In April 2015, the West End production celebrated 26,000 performances.
Agatha Christie became a Dame of the British Empire in 1971; her books have sold billions of copies around the world – many more than any other author except Shakespeare and The Bible. She died on the 12th January 1976 aged 85. At one point she had three plays running at the same time in the West End, a feat never matched by any other woman. She was as successful as a playwright as she was as a novelist. Her most famous characters are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Agatha Christie gave her grandson, Mathew Prichard, the royalties from The Mousetrap for his ninth birthday. In recent years he has donated them to the benefit of charities for the arts and other causes especially in Wales. Mathew Prichard CBE is Chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd.
There have been productions of The Mousetrap in 50 languages, and there is rarely a night without a performance somewhere in the world, but there have never before been so many productions deliberately licensed in the same period.
Mousetrap Theatre Projects is London's leading theatre education charity. It takes 12,000 disadvantaged young people to the best of London theatre each year, who would not otherwise have that opportunity. It is supported by virtually every theatre and producer in London, and by the Society of London Theatre, as well as numerous generous donors.For further information on Mousetrap Theatre Projects or this project, contact Susan Whiddington, Director, on 020 7836 4388.
Having achieved many world records at The Ambassadors Theatre, where it opened, it moved to the St. Martin’s Theatre in March 1974 without missing a performance, and in its new home it has achieved many more world records. Only the clock on the mantelpiece has survived, everything else has been replaced.
No seat has ever been sold at a discount. For many years the advertising announced this by proclaiming: “Sorry – no discount ever from any source”.
The Mousetrap became the world’s longest running production on 12 April 1958, exceeding the run of “Chu-Chin-Chow”, on its 2,239th performance.
The Mousetrap has four entries in the Guinness Book of Records, including: for the ‘longest continuous run of any show in the world’; ‘most durable’ actor (David Raven, who played Major Metcalf for 4,575 performances from 22nd July 1957 until 23rd November 1968); and ‘longest serving understudy’ (Nancy Seabrooke, who stood by as Mrs Boyle 6,240 times until 12th March 1994, and actually did so 72 times).
In March 1956, Peter Saunders sold the film rights, but shrewdly added the proviso that the film could not be released until six months after the end of the West End run. The film has yet to be made.
The Mousetrap Challenge Cup horse race took place at the Devon and Exeter Races from 1967 to 1991 - Agatha Christie herself presented the trophy to the first winner – and at Sandown Park from 1995 onwards.
Peter Saunders, the original producer of The Mousetrap and of many other Agatha Christie plays, married Katie Boyle in 1979, was knighted in 1982 for services to the theatre; and died in 2003.
In 1994 Sir Peter handed over his responsibilities to a new company, Mousetrap Productions, under the management of Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen.
A SYNDICATED INTERVIEW WITH MATHEW PRICHARD
I suppose it took some time for it to sink in that I had a famous grandmother known to the world as Agatha Christie. I first remember her during the years when I was at preparatory school and her house at Wallingford was nearby. We used to have enjoyable ‘exeats’ on Sundays and it was, I think, then that the first glimmers of truth came through. Very sensibly, the headmaster of my school insisted on initialling all books that came into the school. I came back from Wallingford clutching the latest Agatha Christie and wondering, quite genuinely, whether the Head could possibly find any reason for withholding the coveted signature. He never did! There was, however, one occasion when my book took a terribly long time to re-appear. Later I realised that the headmaster’s wife had taken the opportunity to read it!
In such small ways, therefore, did I become aware that I had a talented grandmother. Not that it made a great deal of difference to me. She was just a marvellous grandmother and someone nice to have around. I think perhaps there were four things which, more than anything else endeared her to me. The first was her modesty. To the outside world I suppose this appeared as shyness, but to us she was always infinitely more interested in what we were thinking and doing than in herself.
She could manage to write a book almost without one noticing and sometimes she used to read the new one to us in the summer down in Devonshire. She did so partly, I suspect, to test audience reaction, but partly to entertain us on the inevitable wet afternoons when, no doubt, I was rather difficult to amuse! We all tried to guess, and my mother was the only one who was ever right. I think most of my friends who met her during those years were quite astonished that such a mild, gentle grandmother could really be the authoress of all those stories of intrigue, murder and jealousy.
Her next great characteristic was her generosity. It is by now well-known that she gave me The Mousetrap for my ninth birthday. I do not, I’m afraid, remember much about the actual presentation (if there was one) and probably nobody realised until much later what a marvellous present it was, but it is perhaps worth remembering that my grandmother had been through many times in her life when money was not plentiful. It was therefore incredibly generous of her to give away such a play to her grandson, as in 1952 her books were only approaching the enormous success they have now become. It is also a mistake to think of her generosity only in terms of money. She loved giving pleasure to others – good food, a holiday, a present, or a birthday ode. She loved enjoying herself, and also to see others around her enjoying themselves.
The third thing I always enjoyed was her enthusiasm. Despite her modesty or shyness, it was never far below the surface. I think she always had a love/fright relationship with the theatre. Although I am sure she found experience very wearing, she always enjoyed other people’s enthusiasm for her plays and found it infectious. I went to The Mousetrap several times with her in varying company – family parties, girlfriends, and the Eton cricket team when I was captain in 1962. I would say we all enjoyed the play and my grandmother’s company in equal measure. But she was enthusiastic about other people’s plays as well, about archaeology, opera and perhaps above all about food! In short, she was an exciting person to be with because she always tried to look on the good side of things and people; she always found something to enthuse about.
When I had the pleasure of taking my own children, aged twelve and eleven, to The Mousetrap for the first time they enjoyed it tremendously, and crossed off assiduously in their programmes those whom they thought couldn’t have done it (the real culprit was excluded at an early stage!). It was great evening for me, and would have been, I am sure, for my grandmother had she been there. I think it tells us something about the success of the play, too: it contains so much for everybody – humour, drama, suspense and a jigsaw puzzle – suitable for all ages and taste; regrettably not too many plays on the London scene can say the same, and I sometimes feel that actors and actresses, anxious like everybody else for employment, must wish that there were more plays with universal appeal like this.
My grandmother died in January 1976. My family received hundreds of letters from all different walks of life and every part of the world, and I have never seen such a uniform expression of devotion and admiration. No doubt that was because she was a kind, generous and devout person, and preferred always to believe the best of people. She never had an unkind word to say about anybody. We were all left with many happy memories and, of course, all her books and plays, which I am sure will be enjoyed for many generations to come.
It would be remiss of me not to say, on this occasion, something about my grandmother and Peter Saunders. I myself remember Peter as a persistent producer of medium-pace off-cutters in my boyhood cricket days at Greenway in Devon. I am sure it is no exaggeration to say that many Agatha Christie plays would never have been written at all but for his judicious mixture of persuasion, encouragement, confidence and pleading. She adored it all, and certainly, we all recognise what The Mousetrap owed Peter in its earlier days. His confidence in it never wavered and its longevity is as much a tribute to his great partnership with my grandmother as to anything else.
It is inevitable perhaps that my own impressions of my grandmother are rather personal ones. She was, above all, a family person and through everybody, from the literary world, from the world of archaeology and from the stage has good reason to be grateful to her it is her family who have the most to be grateful for – her kindness, her charity, and for just being herself.
CAST BIOGRAPHIES
Anna Andresen– Mollie Ralston
Anna trained at The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, her previous theatre credits include The Frozen Scream (Birmingham Hippodrome/Wales Millennium Centre), The 39 Steps (Criterion Theatre) Above & Beyond, You Once Said Yes (LLLR) Into The Sunlit Uplands (Theatre 80.St Marks, NYC)Texting From Dachau (Red Bean Studio, NYC) Running On Empty, Lisa Is Looking Into The Mirror (Bennett Media Studio, NYC) , Red Admiral (Soho Studio) The Bald Prima Donna (The Etc) and Crossed Wires (Theatre 503). In addition to her work on stage Anna has also appeared in Fortitude, Miss Marple, Silent Witness and Wire in the Blood.