Curtain Up (45 page)

In America, where Christie's only stage hit remained
Ten Little Indians
, and where
The Suspects
had sunk without trace the previous month, the London correspondent of theatre and film magazine
Variety
reported:

Final thriller of the year is this ingenious whodunit by Agatha Christie, whose
The Hollow
last year swung the trend back to worthwhile crime plays. There is suspense and considerable
speculation as to the why and the wherefore in this one, which holds attention all through. If it were less absorbing it would still command box office attention on the reputation of the authoress and popularity of the leading players, Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim. It might stand a good chance on Broadway, although its worth would probably be minimized coming after the current successes
Dial M for Murder
and
Murder Mistaken
.
²⁹

In the same issue of
Variety
a news item headlined ‘Christie's Mousetrap latest London Smash' goes on to say that ‘It was enthusiastically received at the prem[iere], giving every indication of providing a good holiday attraction and having a protracted run.'

When
The Mousetrap
opened in London, Cotes attended on the opening night and the second day; but, according to Saunders' files, he subsequently visited the production only once, seeing only the second act. To make matters worse,
The Man
took up residence at the St Martin's Theatre next door, where it played through February and March 1953, before Cotes headed off to New York to direct his wife (and Roger Moore) in a production of the controversial anti-death penalty play
A Pin to See the Peepshow
, which, like
Pick-Up Girl
, Cotes had originally produced and directed in a London club theatre in order to avoid a ban from the censor. The production, mounted in September 1953 by an economically challenged New York producer, had the distinction of both opening and closing on Broadway on the same night.

In July 1953, hearing that his director had departed for America, again apparently without having advised him, Saunders wrote to Cotes requesting him not to return to the production, but assuring him that he would still be paid.
³⁰
Hubert Gregg was brought in to oversee recasts of the production, and one can only speculate as to whether Saunders felt obliged to his friend to involve him in some way, having manoeuvred him out of the director's job in the first place. Although his seven-year association with the production inevitably
enabled Gregg to trumpet his own contribution to its success, even he was remarkably equitable in his acknowledgement of the debt that it owed to Cotes, remarking that he had done a ‘bloody good job of it' and expressing his regret that Cotes was not invited to the production's anniversary parties.
³¹

In 1954 Saunders offered to pay Cotes £2,000 in exchange for relinquishing his 1.5 per cent royalty and, according to Cotes, Richard Attenborough suggested that he should accept the offer, as he was about to leave the production and it seemed unlikely that the run would continue much longer in his absence.
³²
Cotes, however, insisted on sticking to his original royalty deal. His decision was to prove the correct one.

As it happens, the takings did decline sharply when Attenborough left the cast, and the next two years were bumpy ones. ‘It was my faith and money that kept the play on and turned it into a success,' said Saunders in a letter that he drafted to Cotes' lawyers. ‘Had the play come off as it ought to have done in 1955 Mr Cotes' £2,000 would have given him a substantial profit . . . Had he accepted this sum I also undertook to keep his name on the posters and programmes for the run.'
³³
Although Saunders technically had no right to remove Cotes from the billing, he did so. By 1985 Cotes had earned £156,000 in royalties. There can be no doubt, however, that Saunders is not exaggerating his own input, and that his careful stewardship and publicist's instincts were central to establishing the production's longevity. Successive anniversaries and milestones were celebrated with publicity stunts, star-studded parties and royal visits, as the records tumbled and eventually
The Mousetrap
became the longest running theatrical production of any sort in the history of the world, eclipsing the twenty-six-year run (1933 to 1959) of
The Drunkard
in Los Angeles and outlasting the forty-two-year run (1960 to 2002) of
The Fantasticks
in New York. Christie herself was a regular attender at milestone events, posing for photographs, cutting cakes and occasionally making her legendarily brief speeches. ‘I was brought in,' she recalls, ‘subjected to cutting tapes, kissing actresses, grinning from ear to ear, simpering, and having to
suffer the insult to my vanity that occurs when I press my cheek against that of a young and good-looking actress and know that we shall appear in the news the next day – she looking beautiful and confident in her role, and I looking frankly
awful.
Ah well, good for one's vanity, I suppose!'
³⁴

Although Christie was to enjoy the first twenty-three years of
The Mousetrap
, the one sadness for her was that this longed-for theatrical success came so late in life, and that it is as an increasingly frail old lady that she will be remembered by those who attended these events and in the media records of them. The tall, spirited, strikingly beautiful girl who light-heartedly penned
Teddy Bear
and
Eugenia and Eugenics
was no doubt there in spirit to soak up the plaudits of the theatrical community that Agatha Christie so cherished being a part of.

Whatever Peter Saunders may have maintained about the way in which he made Christie the star, he was certainly not shy about announcing the participation of star actors on the occasions when he got them. Advertising for the play gave prominence to the names of Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, and their photographs were widely used on printed material. Amongst the items featuring their picture was a leaflet carrying the following intriguing message on the reverse:

ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS . . .

Whenever a new Agatha Christie play is produced, the producing management is always asked the same questions. This is some indication of the interest taken in these thrillers, and the customary questions are, therefore, answered here.

Is Hercule Poirot in the play?

The answer is ‘no', and if this may disappoint Poirot fans, it should be remembered that it is very difficult to find the ideal stage Poirot and that it would be unsatisfactory to miscast such a fascinating and individual character.

Is there any comedy in it?

Answer: Emphatically YES.

Is it gruesome?

Answer: No. It is thrilling, gripping, but contains nothing
that will send anyone home to have nightmares.

Was it adapted from a book?

Answer: No. It is an original play although many years ago there was a broadcast called ‘Three Blind Mice' on which the play is based.

Is it a new play or a revival?

Answer: It is a new play, written by Agatha Christie during the run of her play,
The Hollow
, at this theatre.

A curious question.

Many people ask whether there are any revolver shots in the play, and the answer is no. Not one.
³⁵

One of the earliest records to be set by
The Mousetrap
was as the longest running play in the history of British theatre, which the production achieved on its 1,998th performance on 13 September 1957. The record had previously been held by the 1941 production of Noël Coward's
Blithe Spirit
, and Coward had the good grace to send his fellow playwright a telegram of congratulation from Bermuda: ‘Dear Agatha Christie, much as it pains me I really must congratulate you on The Mousetrap breaking the long run record. All my good wishes, Noel Coward.' Christie was a great admirer of Coward, and would have delighted in this gesture, which makes it all the more extraordinary that the telegram turned up inside an old bureau bought at an auction in Greenway in 2011.
³⁶
What is even odder is that Hubert Gregg quotes the ‘missing' telegram in his 1980 book;
³⁷
perhaps he was given a transcript in 1957, as this particular milestone was reached during his tenure as director.

In addition to Saunders' tireless efforts, other factors were undoubtedly a major contributing factor to
The Mousetrap
's success. According to Saunders, the production needed to play to 80 per cent of capacity at the then-419 seat Ambassadors simply to cover its running costs, although he eventually added a further thirty-four seats. The small theatre, as well as the play's star casting and favourable reviews, however, resulted in the display of ‘sold out' signs for the first three months; someone even made a living renting chairs to the queue at the
box office. As Dickens observed in
Nicholas Nickleby
, ‘It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can first be brought to believe they can never get in.'

This was not lost on Max Mallowan: ‘Many things combined to contribute to its phenomenal success over and above the natural genius of the author, which is all too easy to forget in the analysis. First there was the comparatively exiguous size of the theatre . . .'
³⁸
And Christie herself was not unaware of the advantageous nature of the project's underlying economics. In a 1961 interview with the
Sunday Times
she observed, ‘I've thought a lot about it. Of course it is a small play in a small theatre, which helps. It hasn't got terrific running costs or overheads. But I think it really is probably because it is the sort of play you can take anyone to. It is not really frightening, it is not really horrible, it is not really a farce, but it has got a little bit of all those things, and perhaps that satisfies a lot of different people.'
³⁹
And in her autobiography Christie remarks:

People always ask me to what I attribute the success of
The Mousetrap
. Apart from replying with the obvious answer, Luck! – because it is luck, ninety per cent luck, at least, I should say – the only reason I can give is that there is a bit of something in it for almost everybody: people of different age groups and tastes can enjoy seeing it . . . But I think, considering it and trying to be neither conceited nor over-modest that, of its kind – which is to say a light play with both humour and thriller appeal – it is well constructed. The thing unfolds so that you want to know what happens next, and you can't quite see where the next few minutes will lead you. I think, too, though there is a tendency for all plays that have run a long time to be acted, sooner or later, as if the people in them were caricatures, the people in
The Mousetrap
could all be real people . . . a young woman, bitter against life, determined to live only for the future; the young man who refuses to face life and yearns to be mothered; and the boy who childishly wants to get his own back . . . all these seem to me real, natural, when one watches them.
⁴⁰

As ever for Christie the playwright, her chief concern is the creation of believable characters. Those commentators who regard her primarily as a constructor of plots, and dismiss her characters as stereotypes, would do well to study her plays in more detail.

The London Council for the Promotion of Public Morality did not agree that
The Mousetrap
was the sort of play you could take anyone to. Founded in 1899 to combat vice and indecency in London, the Council was comprised of religious leaders from across the faiths as well as representatives of charitable associations and the medical profession. When
The Mousetrap
opened it ruled that the play was suitable for adults only, and it was not until 1963 that Saunders persuaded its general secretary, George Tomlinson, to get the Council to reassess the production and acknowledge that it was suitable for children. Not that it mattered; numerous children had seen and enjoyed the production in the interim. The Council was disbanded in 1969. The production sailed on.

The Mousetrap's
longevity has become something of a double-edged sword, an easy target for satirists and for those who criticise the West End's inherent conservatism. Christie herself believed that its astonishing and seemingly unaccountable success turned critics and commentators against her; and for advocates of the ‘new wave' in British theatre in the late 1950s, including John Osborne himself, it came to symbolise everything that they were striving to subvert. Max Mallowan observes that the production became ‘so successful that it has inevitably attracted the attention of the green-eyed monster – jealousy. To jaundiced critics it has been an unpardonable offence that any one play should monopolize a theatre for so long. I have little fancy for such bitter lemons.'
⁴¹

For a while, successive caretaker directors altered any references in the text, such as prices, that risked dating the play; but these days it is delivered resolutely as a period piece and, as such, has achieved the status of a cherished national treasure. At some point the production achieved sufficient momentum to carry on running simply because of the novelty
of the fact that it does. Statistics are kept about how many miles of shirts have been ironed and how many tons of ice cream sold, and members of the company have entered the
Guinness Book of Records
for long service (although these days the full cast is changed annually). Amongst the historical curios still featured in the production are the original mantelpiece clock and the hand-operated wind machine. And the voice of Deryck Guyler can still be heard as the radio announcer, just as it was on the first night, although the stage manager no longer needs to place a needle on a record in order to create the effect. For all this, though, it shouldn't be forgotten that when
The Mousetrap
premiered it was very emphatically set in ‘the present'.