You could bring out a Guinness Book of Records just on Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap alone. The play has been running longer than most of us have been alive.

Is its success and longevity due to its dramatic quality or is it famous just for being famous? Is it like the old pair of slippers that no longer fit us but we are reluctant to throw away because we have had them for such a long time that they have become part of the fabric of our lives?

Back in the early fifties, when The Mousetrap first opened, times were very different. England was a drab place – drab physically and drab morally. The war still cast a long shadow and rationing was still part of everyday life. Things were much simpler then, people were less demanding. There was virtually no television and the radio was the main source of entertainment. People were content with simple pleasures and simple pleasures were what Miss Christie provided.

So this has to be borne in mind when watching The Mousetrap with this tour marking, as it does, its 60th Anniversary and its first excursion outside the West End. The plot is fairly transparent, the dialogue poor, “the clues” laid on with a very large trowel and the characters clichéd and thin. And yet…

There is something about Agatha Christie. Her Sudoku-like plots are very cerebral, like a game of chess almost. The dénouement is always greeted, metaphorically, with a ta-dah and everything returns to normal. There is no action, as such, apart from the odd corpse hitting the deck, and a lot of standing around or sitting in comfy chairs. But the plays still grip us if we are willing to go with the flow and accept things on Miss Christie’s terms. It’s like The Archers used to be or those old, long-disguarded slippers; we take comfort in looking back to the good old days when life was perceived as much simpler.

So, that said, what about The Mousetrap? Well, firstly I must say I really enjoyed it, I went with the flow. The set was magnificent and a very far cry from the wobbly ones we used to see years ago in rep. The costumes, props and feel of the thing really placed us back in the age of Bovril, ITMA and powdered milk. All the performances were excellent – former Dr Who squeeze Louise Jameson is the nominated star but I especially liked the very camp and ever-so-slightly over the top Oliver Gully as the eccentric Christopher Wren who usually managed to upstage everyone. It’s not Ibsen, but then it doesn’t claim to be. On its own terms it’s great and difficult to fault. On normal critical, dramatic, theatrical terms it’s still great.  ★★★★☆   Michael Hasted at Cheltenham Everyman on 22nd March 2016