See how it runs: will The Mousetrap bring the West End back to life?

Tomorrow sees the reopening of The Mousetrap, after 14 months. The familiar red neon signage on St Martin’s Theatre will light up anew: a historic moment. Only the pandemic managed to bring the world’s longest-running play to a standstill. “It’s an enduring symbol of London theatre,” says its producer Adam Spiegel. “Its return signifies theatre’s restoration.”

Spiegel organised the 60th anniversary tour, and in 2018 took over running the London production, seen by more than 10 million people and poised to present performance number 28,200 (an antique wooden board in the foyer keeps a running score) tomorrow night. Now that performances are resuming, initially with socially-distanced audiences, there’s a fresh chance to reflect on The Mousetrap’s popularity and longevity – and ponder too whether the most famous whodunit on the planet can maintain its seemingly unending life.

When it officially opened on November 25 1952, next door at the Ambassadors Theatre (it moved to the St Martin’s 22 years later), it was a major event, and critically lauded. Sheila Sim created the role of Mollie Ralston, the co-owner of Monkswell Manor, in which murder is soon afoot. Richard Attenborough, Sim’s husband, played Det Sgt Trotter, who arrives at the snowbound hotel on skis to quiz the five guests and two hosts about the recent strangulation of a woman in London. Though the critics won’t be passing judgment, it will be a theatrical event again this week, not just for being the first West End play off the blocks.

The journey back has entailed slog, sweat and sadness: a new cast poised to take over last spring had to be given their notice when the playhouses were closed; another was assembled for a planned return last October, which got pulled in September. Furloughing helped to save the 60-strong workforce at the theatre, but with international tourism dead in the water this summer, no government-backed insurance and no concrete certainty that restrictions will lift outright, the financial risks remain high. The capacity will be at about 250 (it’s usually 550).

Covid-wise, the audience must be temperature-checked and face-masked; on the plus side, drinks will be brought to seats. Doubling the costs, there will be two alternating companies for the relaunch, rehearsed separately – enabling continuity should one cast be required to isolate. It’s envisaged that this set-up will persist for several months. On stage, the actors – regularly Covid-tested and temperature-checked, and required to wear face masks before curtain-up – are kept two metres apart. To minimise tactility, some hugs and a kiss have been removed.

Spiegel has recruited a cluster of well-known names for this comeback. Notable faces include Bouquet of Barbed Wire star Susan Penhaligon, Strictly Come Dancing finalist Danny Mac and children’s TV icon Derek Griffiths.

Griffiths’s presence, and that of former EastEnders star Nicholas Bailey, attests to a turning-point in the show’s life – according to the producers, for the first time in its London stage history the company includes black actors.

Bailey, who plays co-proprietor Giles Ralston, says: “I was told at drama school I’d never be in The Mousetrap. When I left in 1993, there weren’t a lot of black actors in this kind of job. It wasn’t something I ever thought I’d have the opportunity to do. This wasn’t a role written for a black actor, but it’s absolutely OK for me to play it. And it’s going to be up to the audience to take it and run with it.”

This belated accommodation with modern British society begs the question as to what has enabled The Mousetrap to survive, despite ongoing social change that has consigned many plays over the years to the status of passé curios.

Based on a 1947 radio play called Three Blind Mice (written as a birthday present by Christie for Queen Mary), there’s the basic fact that “it’s a thumping good couple of hours’ entertainment”, in the words of her grandson Mathew Prichard, who was given the stage rights for his ninth birthday.

The apparent self-perpetuating success of The Mousetrap has invited snobbery over the years. But the play accurately pinpoints the condition of post-war England and human behaviour. Christie was fascinated by how people present themselves – what they seem, what they really are – and the drama plays on the characters’ and audience’s assumptions and prejudices.

A key plotline was inspired by a child-abuse case that shocked the country in 1945 – the horrific killing of 12-year-old Dennis O’Neill, fostered on a remote Shropshire farm with his brother Terence, who lived to tell the tale in the grim memoir Someone to Love Us.

“The play spoke to people in the post-war era, and reflected the tough realities of life,” argues Julius Green, a producer and the author of Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre. “If it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been that successful. People go for an evening of thrills – and they get all that. But subliminally, it connects on a deeper level.” As well as being a consummate thriller, Green thinks The Mousetrap will offer fresh frissons. “After what we’ve been through, I think the play’s general mood of displacement is going to resonate more strongly.”

With Witness for the Prosecution returning to County Hall later this summer, and an autumn tour beckoning for a new staging of the bleak 1939 novel And Then There Were None (both directed by Lucy Bailey), the queen of crime’s theatrical staying-power hardly seems in doubt. “We had one of the best years for book sales we’ve ever had,” Prichard says.

Still there’s no room for complacency. The original title of And Then There Were None has long been unprintable and offensive. “I can assure you that my grandmother didn’t have a racist bone in her body,” Prichard insists, but concedes: “Her first book was published in 1920. In a hundred years, social mores have changed beyond recognition.”

Is she too cherished ever to be “cancelled”? “I wish the situation was predictable,” he admits. “We live in times when everybody has to be careful.

“The terrifying thing is that someone can make up their minds about something, and go, ‘So-and-so shouldn’t have said that, therefore we’re not going to teach their books’, or whatever.” But there’d surely be an outcry if the “cancel mob” came for Christie? “I’d hope so.”

The Mousetrap doesn’t seem in mortal danger. Still, this time perhaps we shouldn’t wait to see how it runs, but try to catch it while we can.

The Mousetrap runs at St Martin’s Theatre, London WC2 from Monday 17 May. Info: uk.the-mousetrap.co.uk