Curtain Up

by Julius Green

  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 se
ats. 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’.

  In 1999 The National Theatre included The Mousetrap in its ‘100 Plays of the Century’, and the resulting ‘platform’ performance in the Cottesloe Theatre on 30 March that year remains to this day the only occasion on which the words of Agatha Christie, playwright, have been spoken on stage at the National, although her most enduring play’s title does get the occasional mention, much to the amusement of audiences for Hamlet.

  The exploitation of residual rights in The Mousetrap has inevitably followed an unusual pattern, given the continuing West End run. Amateur and repertory rights have never been released in the UK, although there have been numerous productions throughout the world, including a successful run in Paris, a twenty-six-year run in Toronto and regular presentations in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. John Mills led the cast in a production presented by Saunders for British troops in Germany in 1954, and a major UK tour was launched in the play’s sixtieth year, as were celebratory productions in sixty cities across the globe. The film rights to The Mousetrap were sold in 1956, but with the proviso that no film can actually be shown until after the end of the West End run. Quite how successful a film of The Mousetrap would be is open to question; the premise of the play is essentially theatrical, and it does not have the cinematic potential of much of Christie’s other stage work. The concern, then, is presumably less that a film would give away the play’s ending (the audience’s cooperation in this regard is enlisted in a nightly curtain speech) and more that it would risk damaging the reputation of a successful theatrical brand.

  The same fears also led to a very considered strategy for the play’s American production. After the debacles of Towards Zero, Hidden Horizon and The Suspects, a conscious decision was taken by Cork and Saunders not to expose the piece to Broadway audiences and critics. Max Mallowan identifies its very Englishness as one of the characteristics that has led to the play becoming a tourist attraction in London, and there can be no doubt that this quality in Christie’s work was a contributing factor to the failure of three successive American productions. As many transatlantic theatrical producers have discovered to their cost, England and America can all too often be two countries divided by a common language, and in the case of The Mousetrap this caution was probably justified. Ten Little Indians had demonstrated that some of Christie’s plays could enjoy even greater success in New York than in London. But not all of them. Her biggest Broadway triumph, as it happens, was still ahead of her, and the fact that The Mousetrap had not been sprung on Broadway in the interim was doubtless a contributing factor to her ultimate theatrical success there.

  Given his careful nurturing of The Mousetrap, Saunders came to believe, not unreasonably, that full ownership of the project should, as far as possible, be vested in himself. After two and a half years at the Ambassadors he had renegotiated the rental terms and entered into a long-term occupancy deal with its owners. As The Stage reported, Saunders ‘expects The Mousetrap to run for another year. When it finishes he will present a new Christie play.’42 In 1958, with the play showing no signs of finishing, he acquired the long lease o
n the theatre. As well as becoming his own landlord, Saunders made outright purchases of a number of the play’s residual rights and bought out several of its investors including Richard Attenborough, who had eventually taken a 10 per cent stake in the production for £500, and who used the money from its sale to help finance his film Gandhi. In 1969 Saunders even bought out Mathew Prichard, paying a substantial sum for the ongoing rights in the play; although a quirk of UK copyright law stipulates that any rights assigned prior to 1956 revert to the writer’s ‘residuary legatee’ twenty-five years after their death, meaning that in 2001 Rosalind found herself to be the beneficiary of the royalties, her mother having assigned them to Matthew in 1951. At this point, Rosalind could technically have closed the show, but a new deal was done with Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen, who had bought the production from Saunders on his retirement in 1994, and since then the author’s royalties have been assigned to a trust which distributes the income to arts charities. Cotes was thus not the only one to receive an offer to relinquish his ongoing interest, and whilst he might arguably have negotiated (and, no doubt, received) a better price than he was offered, he perhaps should not have taken it quite as personally as he did.