As the Christie murder mystery sails past its 70th anniversary (the West End run began at the Ambassadors Theatre on November 25, 1952, after a provincial tour starting at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the previous month), there is a danger of greeting the fact with a shrug of the shoulders. The Mousetrap has been a record- breaker for years, having entered The Guinness Book of Records in 1958 when its 2,239th performance made it the longest-running show of any kind in British theatre history and possibly the world.
A nostalgic recollection calls to mind the early 1980s, when the daily newspaper entertainment pages still carried West End theatre billings. The one for The Mousetrap (‘30th year’, and so on) suggested a reassuring permanency without necessarily making viewing a show seem essential.
This story is from the November 30, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the November 30, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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