Agatha Christie’s iconic thriller is touring over 70 theatres throughout the UK and Ireland and will be showing at The Lichfield Garrick Theatre from Monday 27th March - Saturday 1st April 2023.
The play began life as a short radio play written by Agatha Christie as a birthday present for Queen Mary, the consort of King George V. It was broadcast on 30 May 1947 under the name Three Blind Mice. The story drew from the real-life case of Dennis O'Neill, who died after he and his brother Terence suffered extreme abuse while in the foster care of a Shropshire farmer and his wife in 1945.
The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London.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 UK.
When she wrote the play, Christie gave the rights to her grandson as a birthday present. In the UK, only one production of the play in addition to the West End production can be performed annually.
The Mousetrap, the longest running play in the world and this genre-defining murder mystery from Agatha Christie, the world’s best-selling novelist of all time was first performed at The Theatre Royal Nottingham in 1952.
This 70th Anniversary tour marks the first of many ways that The Mousetrap will be celebrating its extraordinary milestone year.
Following its 1952 premiere touring production, The Mousetrap opened in the West End where still to this day, it continues its record-breaking engagement at the St Martin’s Theatre having been performed there over 28,500 times, selling over 10 million tickets.
As news spreads of a murder in London, a group of seven strangers find themselves snowed in at Monkswell Manor, a remote countryside guesthouse. When a police sergeant arrives, the guests discover – to their horror – that a killer is in their midst. One by one, the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts. Which one is the murderer? Who will be their next victim?
The Mousetrap is produced by Adam Spiegel & Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen and Directed by Ian Talbot OBE.
For further information, see MousetrapOnTour.co.uk