The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie
Dec. 31st, 2015 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aTonight we saw The Mousetrap, a murder-mystery by Agatha Christie, at Shotgun Players. It's (now) a rather delightful period piece, set in England just after WWII. Thankfully, the Shotgun Players didn't try and modernize the play, so it kept all of its classic appeal.
It is such a traditional mystery (by today's standard), featuring a house full of people, one of whom is (presumably) the murderer. Every one is even called together by the detective several times.
Toward the end of the play, I came up with a complex explanation for what was going on that fit everything together in a way that I thought was quite clever. It also ended up being not the answer to the mystery. Ah well. Later on I told Kimberly that I felt like Christie had done a great job of setting up yet obscuring a mystery ... but at the same time she did it by making everyone a very possible suspect. Fair or not fair? I dunno, but I liked it.
I'd love to see more of Christie's mystery plays (though this is apparently the big one).
Sadly, this is our last Shotgun play for the nonce. After three years of subscription (I think), we're ending our relationship with them for the moment due to considerable lack of enthusiasm over the next season.
It's being conducted in repertory, which enthused us, but ..
If any of the individual shows get great reviews we may decide to just go see those (but the horrible Antigonick got some good reviews too, which suggests to me that Bay Area theatre critics would laud the emperor's new clothes if they didn't see them).
Longer term, it looks like we won't be continuing our two-year tradition of plays on New Year's Eve, which was kind of cool, but we may not even be in California next 12/31.
It is such a traditional mystery (by today's standard), featuring a house full of people, one of whom is (presumably) the murderer. Every one is even called together by the detective several times.
Toward the end of the play, I came up with a complex explanation for what was going on that fit everything together in a way that I thought was quite clever. It also ended up being not the answer to the mystery. Ah well. Later on I told Kimberly that I felt like Christie had done a great job of setting up yet obscuring a mystery ... but at the same time she did it by making everyone a very possible suspect. Fair or not fair? I dunno, but I liked it.
I'd love to see more of Christie's mystery plays (though this is apparently the big one).
Sadly, this is our last Shotgun play for the nonce. After three years of subscription (I think), we're ending our relationship with them for the moment due to considerable lack of enthusiasm over the next season.
It's being conducted in repertory, which enthused us, but ..
- It includes Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, which you'd have to pay Kimberly and me to see again.
- They're ruining Hamlet by randomly selecting who plays which role at the start of each performance, which is the exact sort of superficial post-modern bullshit that I hate at the theatre, and which also produces travesties like this season's Antigonick, which I think is the only play I've ever walked out of.
- The rest of the season is totally uninspiring based on the play's descriptions.
If any of the individual shows get great reviews we may decide to just go see those (but the horrible Antigonick got some good reviews too, which suggests to me that Bay Area theatre critics would laud the emperor's new clothes if they didn't see them).
Longer term, it looks like we won't be continuing our two-year tradition of plays on New Year's Eve, which was kind of cool, but we may not even be in California next 12/31.