Will Waspe's Whispers
This week The Mousetrap, running inexorably into eternity, edges into its twentieth year at the Ambassadors Theatre. It has become a sort of joke thriller; nearly everybody in the kingdom must know by now who dun it; more baffling, perhaps, is the mystery of how it was ever a success to begin with. The answer to that is that it was pretty good of its kind in its day: carefully cast and tautly directed by Peter Cotes, it justifiably got good reviews. By the time that initial polish had worn off, it was a self-perpetuating legend.
Down the years the production has steadily deteriorated under a succession of directors, mostly indifferent, and the performance is rarely better than that of a second-rate rep company. This week it got its umpteenth new cast — this being the regular policy of impresario Peter Saunders, whom it made rich. He is a canny man with the purse-strings: there was one member of the original cast, who has since died of cancer, who had to leave through illness; when he was well enough to return and asked for 'his job back, he was offered it at £10 a week less. In fact, the only actor who has made any real money from The Mousetrap is Richard Attenborough — the original Det Sgt Trotter — who is another shrewd boy and was bright enough to insist on buying into the show.
Dinosaur stirring
It is fashionable to think of Mr Hugh ' Hinkle ' Beaumont as a theatrical dinosaur, as though he were inalienably attached to the effete, ' french-window plays that were trampled underfoot in the rush to the kitchen sink drama of the 'fifties. But H. M. Tennent Ltd, the management of which Beaumont is boss, would rather ride with the tide than against it — and take any available opportunity to do so. They are, for instance, associated with the Royal Court in the presentation of John Osborne's West of Suez.
They are also as keen as any of the trendier operators to examine the import possibilities of off-Broadway shows, and have more than a nominal interest in Godspell at the Round House — the sort of place in which Binkie ' wouldn't have been found dead in the old days. They got nervous, though, about Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, which scooped most of the off-Broadway awards a couple of years ago. Tennents took the British option, there was talk of Rachel Roberts starring in it — then the option was dropped. There having been no rush to pick it up, Zindel's London agent Harvey Unna is stuck with it for disposal. I wish 'him luck, but it may be that the commercial acumen of Hugh Beaumont — dinosaur or not — still carries more 'local weight than any number of off-Broadway awards.
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