Mousetrap snaps open in Dublin

IMAGINE being gifted the royalties of the world’s longest running play on your ninth birthday.

When Mathew Prichard was given The Mousetrap by his grandmother, Agatha Christie, nobody could predict it would be such a huge success. The touring production of the classic whodunit comes to the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre this week (Jun 25-29). As Prichard says, his grandmother thought the play “might have a nice little run of a year and a half”. She had no idea that she was handing on this incredible institution which celebrated 60 years on London’s West End last November.

In the cosy bar of St Martin’s Theatre in London’s West Street, where the resident production of the play is performed, Prichard, Christie’s only grandchild, says that his inheritance “has been liberating to an extent. Over the course of its history, it has achieved an awful lot, apart from being just about money.”

Prichard’s family charity receives royalties from The Mousetrap which benefit arts events and organisations in Wales where he lives. “It’s much more than a play now; it’s an industry.”

Prichard is the chairman of Agatha Christie Limited, which looks after the copyright of Christie’s work all over the world. What is it worth? “I never talk about money,” says Prichard, who studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford.

Towards the last few years of her life, Christie, who died in 1976, was unwell and it was decided that Prichard should take an interest in the family business. It has turned out to be a satisfying career for Prichard, who is proud that his trust donates money to support opera, classical music and the visual arts.

Prichard is constantly asked if he has inherited his grandmother’s talent for writing. He replies by saying that it’s enough to have “one genius” in the family. “I think for anyone else to try and emulate her would have been presumptuous. I’m quite good on two sheets of A4 but once it gets beyond that, I don’t have the patience or the industry that it takes to write books.” His grandmother, he says, had a tremendous work ethic and there was always an expectation that there would be ‘a Christie for Christmas.’ One of Prichard’s grandchildren has writing talent. One of his three children is a director of the trust.

Asked what Christie was like, Prichard says “to me, she was a perfectly normal grandmother.” She used to occasionally read to him and spent some of the year in the Middle East with her husband.

The Mousetrap is a good solid thriller with a twist. Set in the great hall of Monkswell Manor, it opens with the murder of a woman in London, played out in sound only on a dark stage. The action moves to the manor which has been converted to a guesthouse and is run by a young couple. After their guests arrive, they are snowed in together and hear news of the murder. A detective arrives on skis, believing that a murderer is on his way to the guest house. But when one of the guests is killed the tension ratchets up in the knowledge that the murderer is among the members of the household.

To mark its 60th year, Mousetrap Productions has licensed 60 productions of The Mousetrap played in every continent. For the Dublin production, the cast includes Steven France (Eastenders, The Bill), Bruno Langley (Coronation Street, Doctor Who), Graham Seed (BBC Radio 4’s The Archers), Elizabeth Power (Eastenders) and Clare Wilkie (Eastenders).