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"Once more unto the breach, dear friends"

Uni-Theater in der Großregion

21 -26 June 2008

 

Link: http://www.uni-saarland.de/info/theaterfestival

 

 

ACT will be performing this year's production of

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap

on

Wednesday, 25 June 2008

at

5:00 p.m.

Venue

Aula

Tickets

€ 10 / € 6

(available on the Campus Quad and at the UniShop)

 

About the Play

Giles and Mollie Ralston have just opened Monkswell Manor Guesthouse. The rugs have been swept, the provisions bought, the firewood stacked, and the rooms prepared. No amount of planning, however, could prepare the Ralstons for their unusual guests and the blizzard which promises to strand all of the travellers at the manor. Nearby a woman is murdered and the murderer is believed to be on the way to Monkswell Manor, bent on revenge. Tensions build and accusations fly as a sergeant arrives at the manor on skis. Now everyone‘s safety is in the hands of the lone sergeant who must determine the identity of the murderer, before it is too late.

Facts and Figures

The Legend Continues

The Mousetrap has been thrilling audiences from around the world for as long as HRH Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne.  On the 25th of November 2002 a Royal Gala Performance was held, attended by Her Majesty The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh.

During this phenomenal run there have been no fewer than 336 actors and actresses appearing in the play, 101 miles of shirts have been ironed and over 395 tons of ice cream sold. Some cast members are in the Guinness Book of Records, David Raven as the 'Most Durable actor'for 4575 performances as Major Metcalf, and the late Nancy Seabrooke for a record breaking 15 years as an understudy.

The Mousetrap first entered the record books many years ago on 12th April 1958 when it became the longest running show of any kind in the history of British Theatre.

In 2000 the set was replaced for the first time during the run at St Martin's Theatre, still to the same design as the original. This task was completed over a weekend without the loss of a performance.

 

History of the play

The play began life as a short radio play broadcast on May 30, 1947 called Three Blind Mice in honour of Queen Mary, the consort of King George V. The play had its origins in the real-life case of the death of a boy, Dennis O'Neill, who died whilst in the foster care of a Shropshire farmer and his wife in 1945 (See Three Blind Mice for details).

The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London. The short story has still not been published within the United Kingdom but it has appeared in the United States in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories. The script of the play was published by Samuel French as French's Acting Edition No. 153 in 1954 and is still in print. It was also included in the 1993 HarperCollins collection The Mousetrap and Other Plays. Outside of the West End, only one version of the play can be performed annually. Under the contract terms of the play, no film adaptation can be produced until the West End production has been closed for at least six months.

When she wrote the play, Christie gave the rights to her grandson Mathew Prichard as a birthday present. Prichard currently owns the rights to all of her works.

The play had to be renamed at the insistence of Emile Littler who had produced a play called Three Blind Mice in the West End before the second world war. The suggestion to call it The Mousetrap came from Christie's son-in-law, Anthony Hicks. In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, "The Mousetrap" is Hamlet's answer to Claudius's inquiry about the name of the play whose prologue and first scene the court has just observed (III, ii). The play is actually The Murder of Gonzago, but Hamlet answers metaphorically, since "the play's the thing" in which he intends to "catch the conscience of the king.

 

Notable milestones in the play's history include:

• April 22, 1955 - 1,000th performance.

• September 13, 1957 - Longest-ever sun of a "straight" play in the West End.

• April 12, 1958 - Longest-ever run of a show in the West End with 2239 performances (Previous holder was Chu Chin Chow).

• December 9, 1964 - 5,000th performance.

• December 17, 1976 - 10,000th performance.

• December 16, 2000 - 20,000th performance.

In May 2001 (during the London production's 49th year, and to mark the 25th anniversary of Christie's death) the cast gave a semi-staged Sunday performance at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff on Sea as a guest contribution to the Agatha Christie Theatre Festival 2001, a 12-week history-making cycle of all of Agatha Christie's plays presented by Roy Marsden's New Palace Theatre Company.

A staging at the Toronto Truck Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, that opened on 19 August 1977 became Canada's longest running show, before finally closing on 18 January 2004 after a run of twenty-six years and over 9,000 performances.