Theatre review

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Neil Cooper

Sixty-two years is a frightfully long time to keep a secret. Where Agatha Christie's evergreen whodunnit is concerned, however, keeping schtumm has transformed an inter-audience conspiracy into a global institution that not even social media and the internet has betrayed.

With this in mind, there will be no spoiler alerts in what follows, except to say that, in its depiction of how cruelly children can be treated, this touring production that first flew its London coop two years ago looks oddly current.

Set in a mansion turned guest house just opened by the increasingly furtive Mollie and Giles Ralston, these refugees from the big city find themselves fully booked with a house full of guests seeking shelter from the storm, all of whom come clad in regulation dark overcoat, muffler and face-concealing fedoras.

A murder has been committed in town, and, according to the game Sergeant Trotter, who skis into this TripAdvisor nightmare in waiting, every one of this pot-pourri of eccentrics, busybodies and mysterious men and women with pasts may be involved.

It is far too flip to be the best of Christie's canon, and is somewhat understandably all played rather archly in veteran Mousetrap director Ian Watt-Smith's production (he also directed it in its 38th, 41st, 58th and 59th years).

A set of energetic performances expose the twisted nerves of each character as it is made explicit exactly how they came to be damaged in such a way. It is this mix of pop psychology with a common touch that has kept generations of Christie devotees complicit in the play's conceit for six decades.

But shh. It is far too late to give the game away now.