A luxe riff on Agatha Christie’s classic ‘Mousetrap’ comes to the Guthrie

After 70-plus years, “The Mousetrap” has finally sprung in a big way in Minnesota.

The Agatha Christie whodunit has been performed in schools and community theaters in Minnesota, including at Anoka’s Lyric Arts. But it has not had a locally originated staging at the Guthrie Theater until now.

“I doubt anybody who has seen it has seen such a high-end production as what we have,” said director Tracy Brigden, whose version opens Thursday. “It’s the Guthrie so you know the set is unbelievable, the clothes beautiful and glamorous and everything about it is just so lux.”

Written as an 80th-birthday gift to Queen Mary, “Mousetrap” orbits murder suspects trapped by a snowstorm in an English manor. It started off as a radio play before becoming a stage work that has been running in London’s West End since 1952, the same year Dwight D. Eisenhower won the presidency — save for a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

Now it has become the world’s longest-running play, with some 10 million people taking it in in London.

Bridgen is not one of them.

But what she hasn’t seen with her own eyes she has more than made up for with study. And that’s helped her put on the show that’s become essential entertainment at a time when the true-crime genre continues its popular rise. How does one keep such a work fresh and compelling in the 21st century?

We caught up with the director, who also is the Guthrie’s senior artistic producer and staged last season’s “Dial M for Murder,” before last week’s first preview performance. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: After all these years, why do the “Mousetrap” now?

A: Agatha Christie wrote it originally in 1947, so very close to the end of the war, and she is a true chronicler and commentator on her times. England was in shambles. And so she set this play in a genteel country manor. She’s commenting on the distrust that the country started having for its institutions — people were very skeptical of the judicial system, of educational and medical institutions. And they were certainly skeptical of foreigners, of unmarried women or anyone living an alternative, nontraditional lifestyle. Sounds familiar?

Q: How do you keep “Mousetrap” fresh?

A: The question is how do you play fair with the audience. Agatha Christie is the queen of red herrings but she’s really good at playing fair with the audience. If you came back and saw “Mousetrap” a second or third time, you would see all the clues that have been dropped along the way. That’s one of the hardest things to do in a mystery and she’s a master at it. That accounts for her popularity. She really does play fair.

A: I’ve read a couple of biographies of her, read a lot of her work and watched a lot of the films. I’m just fascinated by the fact that she was such a forthright and independent spirit. She’s the most read and popular author in the world and she would still write on like her passport application: housewife. She always struggled with whether or not she could claim to be a writer. I’m also fascinated by how she just disappeared for 11 days because her husband told her he was in love with another woman and she drove off and checked into a hotel under a pseudonym with the entire world looking for her.

Q: Christie is a master puzzler whose plays require mathematical precision. Have you found that to be true in “Mousetrap”?

A: When I sat down to work on the set with Walt Spangler, the amazing designer who also did ‘Dial M for Murder’ with me, we tried to subvert it in some ways. First, we looked at, can we do it in a snow globe? Can we do the set without doors? Can we do it in the round? But, really, the puzzle is so tight that the only way it works is really with her ground rules suggested by her in the script: three doors, two arches, a window, a fireplace and a staircase. If you don’t have those things, you can’t make the puzzle work.

Q: Because she knocked off so many works, sometimes writing two novels a year, Christie made it look easy. Is she underestimated?

A: She doesn’t get credit for being a real writer. People will give her credit for creating iconic characters or they’ll give her credit for developing the rules of these kind of mysteries — the idea of people trapped in a place like we’ve seen in “The White Lotus” or “Knives Out.” But she is deeper than that.

A: She writes really great strong female characters because, I think, she is a strong woman herself. But she’s underestimated not just because of gender but her popularity. Whenever something becomes popular, the snooty corners of the artistic world say popularity equals sellout. A lot of male authors dismissed her as some kind of bubble gum pop or midcentury pulp fiction.

Q: Which gets us to what makes your production so special?

A: We have five local actors and three out-of-towners in the cast, including Matthew Saldivar, who has been Scrooge, and Matthew Amendt, who was in “Born With Teeth.” What’s really challenging for an actor and fun at the same time is that it’s a show that has it all. It’s not huge like a high-style Wilde or a big farce, but it does have comedy. It also has serious drama, as well. And the cast has to create iconic, almost archetypal, characters. It’ll make you laugh and gasp and at intermission you can place bets on whodunit.

Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends May 18.