Theatre trips for me are like buses. I can spend years not going to the theatre and then I'll go twice in a week!!
I've been a bit of a fan of Agatha Christie's stories now since Christmas time, when 'And Then There Were None' was televised on BBC1 (based on the book, Ten Little Soldier Boys). Since then I've been thinking about doing a murder mystery night and so when I saw tickets for the Mousetrap at my local theatre I was super excited!
I had absolutely NO idea what the storyline was - but honestly, I didn't mind! With mysteries like this it's nice not knowing! (Although admittedly, when I went to see the Woman in Black, I made sure I knew exactly what was going to happen as I'd heard it was terrifying!)
I'm not going to go into too much detail about the plot as I don't want to ruin the ending, but the story focuses around a hotel ran by a young, newly-wed couple. The place is fully booked and it's the middle of winter, so the snow is falling and the guests are pretty much stranded, with no transport or communication links. And then... someone get's murdered!
Like I said, I really don't want to ruin the plot by telling you who did it, but what I will say is that this clever little storyline will have you wondering throughout the play - and discussing it throughout the interval too! Everybody has a motive and everybody has an alibi.
When the show was over we were told that there would be a Q&A session with the cast, so we happily stayed behind while the rest of the audience walked out. We were confused to say the least... Were we supposed to go somewhere else for this Q&A session?
Once the room had emptied the stage manager appeared with her clipboard, looking rather surprised to see us - she had obviously expected to see more people! We said we'd go, so that the cast could go home, but she encouraged us to stay and even had some 'starter questions' written down. It was actually pretty cool, and to top it off, since we were the only 'die hard fans' who stayed, we even got a private backstage tour, how cool is that?!
We were lucky enough to see all the props and costumes, get to walk under the snow machine and find out how they created smoke, so that the pies looked burned! What I thought was really sweet, was that the cast had written good luck notes on the back of the set, and were crossing off the venues of their year-long tour. I'd love to work in a theatre!
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