by Tim Leininger

(L to R) Ricky Oliver, Will Nash Broyles, Sandy York, Christopher McLinden, Caroline Kinsolving, Dana Domenick, Reid Sinclair, and Dick Terhune, and in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at the Sharon Playhouse (Aly Morrisey Photography)

            Murder mysteries have been a part of pop culture for centuries, or even millennia if you consider some of the stories in 1,001 Arabian Nights as part of the genre, but the genre as we know it now can be traced back to the mid-19^th Century with writers like Edgar Alan Poe and later Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. With this legacy there are a lot of tropes that audiences can expect, and they are all here in Sharon Playhouse’s production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, directed by Hunter Foster and running through Oct. 5 at the playhouse at 49 Amenia Road Route 343 in Sharon, Connecticut. It has disingenuous and eccentric characters, secret motives, an old dimly lit manor, secret spaces, a murder in the dark amplifying the terror and tension. It’s all there. But what we want is a thrilling payoff in the end when the killer and their motivations are revealed, and nothing about a murder mystery is more satisfying than when you’re sitting in an audience, and you hear the gasps when that reveal happens, and oh it was so satisfying to hear it again at Sharon Playhouse.

            Aside from a pause during COVID, The Mousetrap is the longest running play in theater, having run over 30,000 performances in a single run in London’s West End where the same production is still running. The play has never received a Broadway treatment, but it has been produced myriads of times around the world. Just three years ago, here in Connecticut, Hartford Stage did their own production. The legacy of the play rests firmly in not only Christie’s ability to write one of the most suspense driven mysteries of all time, but in the capable hands of directors, designers, and cast members who can keep the tension and mystery, while also allowing the piece to breathe with eccentric colorful characters.

Dana Domenick and Will Nash Broyles in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at the Sharon Playhouse (Aly Morrisey Photography)

            Director Hunter Foster plays a delicate balancing act with this production of The Mousetrap, as the sometimes-comical eccentricities of the characters can potentially run against his design team’s moody, gloomy atmospheric aesthetic. He and scenic designers Christopher and Justin Swader turn the great hall of the old drafty Monkswell Manor into a character itself with eyes of taxidermized animals watching from above and a layered lighting design by Wheeler Moon that has varying degrees of illumination from pitch black to a full, warmly lit. Never is the lighting too brilliant, but just bright enough to give the home a sense of welcoming when the show starts. Rarely does the room return to that sense of fully lit exposure. As the play progresses a subtle score of music and sound effects designed by Graham Stone builds with dissonance, audibly writhing with tension.

            All this tension starts at the top of the show as it is announced on the radio that a woman, Maureen Lyon, has been killed and a person of interest is a man with a dark overcoat, a light scarf, and a felt hat. Low and behold, almost everyone who enters the manor can almost fit that description, even the women. The manor has been turned into an inn, managed by Mollie and Giles Ralston (Dana Domenick and Reid Sinclair), a sentimental if somewhat naïve couple. It is their opening night and one by one, the guests arrive, all — including the Ralstons — who end up being potential suspects regarding the murder of Ms. Lyon. There’s Christopher Wren, played with delightful flamboyancy by Will Nash Broyles, the curiously masculine Miss Casewell (Caroline Kinsolving); an unexpected guest, the eccentric Italian Mr. Paravicini (Ricky Oliver), Major Metcalf, played with a mix of military bearing and a subtle degree of secrecy by Dick Terhune, and last, the stately Mrs. Boyle, played with regal pomposity by Sandy York, who regrets coming to what she feels is a poorly managed inn. The last character to arrive is Sgt. Trotter (Christopher McLinden), who has evidence to believe that the murderer of Maureen Lyon is at Monkswell Manor and may be planning on killing again.

Dana Domenick, Reid Sinclair and Ricky Oliver in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at the Sharon Playhouse (Aly Morrisey Photography)

            As suspicions rise, so do the temperature of the drama as accusations fly. But though the drama expands, the characters’ quirks also can play to and against the tension. This is where the balancing act by Foster really must be handled with care, and sometimes, particularly regarding Mr. Paravicini and Christopher Wren, their more comical characters can undercut the tension everything else in the play is trying to evoke. This tends to happen more during the first act, tapering off in the second as the drama demands a bit more serious exchanges in the text. I would have liked these two characters to be a touch more fragile so that the humor could be presented as more of a defense mechanism versus reading as needing some levity in an otherwise seriously dramatic mystery.

            The Mousetrap is a classic, and Hunter Foster and the team at Sharon Playhouse, give it the respect it deserves, honoring the classic tropes the story plays toward, while amplifying the tropes with a spooky, dark, and eerie atmosphere through its design. There is some undercutting in this through some of the character representation early on, but once the drama settles in and the tension increases, the push to one of the best endings in murder mystery history pays off with devilishly satisfying glee.

THE MOUSETRAP

PRODUCTION

Written by Agatha Christie

Directed by Hunter Foster

Scenic Design: Christopher Swader and Justin Swader

Costume Design: Kathleen Deangelus

Lighting Design: Wheeler Moon

Sound Design: Graham Stone

Technical Director: Alex Lewis

Production Manager: Caroline Lapinski

Scenic Artist: Karla Woodworth

Wig & Makeup Design: Bobbie Zlotnik

Audio Engineer: Nicholas Olmoz

Production Stage Manager: Kristine Schachter

Assistant Stage Manager: Cameron Fleck

Casting Director: Casting by Arc, Duncan Stewart, CSA

CAST

Will Nash Broyles as Christopher Wren

Dana Domenick as Mollie Ralston

Caroline Kinsolving as Miss Casewell

Christopher McLinden as Sgt. Trotter

Ricky Oliver as Mr. Paravicini

Reid Sinclair as Giles Ralston

Dick Terhune as Major Metcalf

Sandy York as Mrs. Boyle