A Word In Edgewise: Christie’s Gift Keeps on Giving: ‘The Mousetrap’

“Blue,” that is, the hue, creates a ninth character in the Guthrie’s latest production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap.” Set in a winter snowstorm, the frisson of murder onstage is intensified through the spectrum of chilly blues painted throughout the vast single-room set; the walls, the window trim, the blue height of the ceiling all make the viewer unconsciously pull his sweater around a bit tighter. The whole deftly reminds even today’s audience of the post-WWII want still felt across Britain in 1952, even among the formerly well-to-do.

The young couple, Mollie and Giles Ralston, welcoming the first guests to the opening of their respectable inn, have laid in tinned goods, “just in case,” and hope their coal supply will be adequate for their furnace to face the rising storm. The set’s exaggeratedly high walls display the spiked heads of long-defunct ungulates, lives ended in an obviously more prosperous era, their glassy eyes offering cold comfort to owners and guests alike here at Monkswell Manor, Berkshire, England. Young proprietors Mollie and Giles, married just a year, open their doors to an odd assortment of registered guests — and one outlier who claims his car lies in a drift and is begging for shelter. “Odd” embraces pretty much everyone: fey Christopher Wren (lighter loafers and he’d be eye-to-eye with the elk), Mrs. Boyle, (“What dissatisfies you?”­ — “What’ve you got?”), Major Metcalf (Harumph!), Miss Casewell (briskly Y-chromosomed), Mr. Paravicini (risen from the drifts) and Det. Sgt. Trotter (arrived by ski to sort it all out). Tracy Bergen, justifiably lauded for her direction of Guthrie’s “Dial M for Murder” last season, a “long-time fan of murder mysteries,” explains in the program’s Q&A, “There’s a formula to both writing murder mysteries and making them work onstage.” Directing a Christie, “master of puzzles on the page,” her job is to find the balance between fairness to the viewer re: available clues while keeping secrets close to the vest. She manages both.

The only guest not under scrutiny is the prickly Mrs. Boyle (who lies dead on the parquet), but the others…? My sacred vow of silence (requested of each audience member by Christie herself from the beginning) keeps me from revealing more, but then, Christie’s puzzle skills assured no early revelation. Why did the Ralstons lie to each other? Why did Paravicini’s car sink into that particular nearby drift? Is this Christopher Wren really an architect? And, why, under her husband’s jealous gaze, would Mollie call this stranger “Chris”?

“The Mousetrap” continues as the world’s longest, continually running (except during COVID) play — in the world — and Christie is credited, along with contributing to ordinary murder mysteries, for having invented this sub-genre of “country house murders” all by herself.

Christie created her own mysteries and personal puzzles. Her cleverest perhaps was to seal it into her will that “The Mousetrap” could not be made into a (more widely-distributed) movie until the play closed on the West End. The closest — but no cigar — contender was “See How They Run” (2022), whose title sourced a line from the “Three Blind Mice”nursery rhyme, featured characters from the play and was set in London’s Ambassadors Theatre, the real play’s original production seating 453, housing the first 21 years of “Mousetrap”’s run.

This one’s on the Guthrie’s McGuire Proscenium Stage through May 18.