When it opened on 6 October 1952, one imagines that the producers of Agatha Christie’s whodunnit The Mousetrap would have been realistically hoping for a successful run through Christmas and perhaps even making it through the cold, fallow early months of 1953. They could not have conceived that 73 years later, their successors would be celebrating the show’s 30,000 performance in the West End.
After all, with all due respect to the late Dame Agatha, The Mousetrap is a perfectly serviceable example of her work but not especially more memorable than say Ten Little ******* (think of the most derogatory term possible for African Americans), which subsequently became Ten Little ******* (think of the most derogatory term possible for Native Americans) and more recently And Then There Were None, or Witness for the Prosecution.
It certainly has none of the subtlety or character analysis of rough contemporary, J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, especially in Stephen Daldry’s unforgettable revival, which continues to delight audiences today.
Rather than its artistic merit, the reason why The Mousetrap will soon have endured for three quarters of a century while other equally meritorious and for better works have been long forgotten might well lie in the marketing.
Audiences are begged to keep the identity of the murderer (if that isn’t too much of a spoiler for whodunnit) a secret, which obviously tickles those who have paid good money to find out the answer. Further, as theatrical presentations go, it is relatively cheap. The show doesn’t need to rely on famous names to bring in the punters, and sets that have remained in place for years probably need little more than an occasional dust.
Whether by accident or design, the play has now become part of theatrical and social folklore to the point where tourists are aware of its existence before they arrive in London and add a trip to St Martin’s Theatre (where it has now been playing for over half a century) to their agenda, in the knowledge that they will be seeing the most popular play in history. It must help that hotel concierges, taxi drivers and other tourist tippers have long realised that this is a safe bet.
Looking at the statistics, 300,000 performances can presumably be multiplied up by say an average attendance of 300 (just over 50% capacity), which would mean a total West End attendance of 9 million, equivalent to over half of London’s population. If they had all been paying today’s ticket prices, of up to £125, then revenues might be somewhere well over half a billion pounds.
Further, where many of the most popular shows, especially jukebox musicals, would be helped by multiple repeat visits, it is hard to imagine that many theatregoers would be rushing back to see a relatively bog standard whodunnit, especially if they could remember who did it.
It is also self-fulfilling. Now that The Mousetrap is a venerable London landmark, it will continue to receive new generations of tourists and if the year-long COVID interregnum didn’t manage to kill it off, it is hard to know what will.