Theatre
Mediocre smash
Mark Amory
The Mousetrap (St Martin's) Salonika (Royal Court Upstairs) In a week of arrivals from Stratford already reviewed here, I thought I would look in and see what sort of shape The Mousetrap was in. This turned out to be Poor timing; I now read that the director Who missed out on a fortune by leaving before the first night in 1952 is, at the age of 76, going to have another go with a new east in the autumn. This would have been a more obvious moment for reassessment. what will he do and why is anyone tamper- ing with it at all? Even if he makes a better Mousetrap, the world is already beating a path to the St Martins. It was full the even- ing I went and the nice lady at the box of- fice said this was always so, which makes it unique among London plays without music at the moment. I always enjoy the statistics (174 actors in this eight-part play so far, an audience that would stretch to the High- lands if they stood in line, but I cannot tell You how many cigarettes have been smok- ed) but I think it is more impressive still to have added a laugh to Hamlet. There is always a snigger now when Claudius is told what the offensive play he is watching is called; this presumably is where Agatha Christie found the new title for her piece Which was originally and more characterist- ically called Three Blind Mice (she often Used nursery rhymes and poems — Hickory Oickory Dock, Ten Little Niggers, A Pocketful of Rye). The statistics are to the point because they detail the success which has become the most interesting thing about the play. It is a mediocre piece, perhaps one point above the average successful thriller. On the other hand it is in the centre of the old Worn-out tradition. There is a panelled room and we see the snow falling at a Uniform rate whenever the curtains are drawn back. Soon the telephone wires have been cut. The first act begivs and ends with a scream on a darkened sthge. In between We meet a nice old-fashioned young couple Who are turning their fairly stately home in- to a boarding house. Written naturalistical- ly they have been overtaken by time and Parodies so now they resemble Brad and Janet in The Rocky Horror Show except
that they are still played straight. Guests arrive at conveniently spaced intervals when one door closes another opens, as someone said. Clearly each is a suspect though as yet we have no crime, and each is allowed one characteristic. Mrs Boyle, dressed in tweeds, complains. I was with her about only macaroni cheese for lunch, not so confident over `.the working class have got the bit between their teeth'. Christopher Wren wears pink trousers and squeals with ecstasy over the sideboard, so we know what he is, which is described here as `neurotic'. Curiously these two get the same laughs and attitude of indulgent disap- proval from the audience that they must have received 30 years ago. Among the others is Mr Paravacini, a foreigner whose eyebrows overact by any standards, but you can see why.
There is only one murder, which purists think superior but, failing more distracting death, the actors have to struggle to inject some life. There is less action than I remembered and more boring, even repetitious, questioning which only establishes that (of course) all of them had opportunity. The plot is utterly unconvinc- ing and adequately ingenious but not in the same class as Sleuth or Witness for the Prosecution, the solution is expounded with admirable speed. Half of the success comes from giving people precisely what they ex- pect, as with the James Bond or Carry On films. The other half is explicable now that it has become a phenomenon. But why did it happen to this one and not, for example, The Hollow, much the same but rather bet- ter? There is a mystery here.
Salonika by Louise Page starts with an old woman (Gwen Nelson) on a Mediterra- nean beach, munching an apple, giggling delightedly and generally in good spirits, which are improved when she spots and peers at a handsome naked youth. Her virginal daughter, Enid, 'born a prune' and now 64 is less ecstatic and more embarrass- ed. When her mother's elderly admirer, Len, arrives, she is downright snappy: `Why does he call you kitten? Your name is Charlotte. You are 84. He might at least call you cat.' Several things happen but the ef- fect is static. The ghost of Charlotte's hus- band erupts from the sand, most effective- ly, and asks who won World War I during which he died. Enid does a rapturous dance and nearly sleeps with the now bejeaned boy. He is 27 — everyone's age is meticulously established. Old age is discuss- ed, mostly with reference to its drawbacks, though Charlotte, apart from a moment of panic, continues to enjoy herself. There is also talk of waste, the waste of lives cut off by the war or of lives unlived and it is easy to pounce on the repeated word as a theme. But the atmosphere is stronger than the argument, the attraction of the play is more elusive.
Salonika, unlike Edward Bond's Sum- mer, some of whose subject matter it shares, does not seem to be trying to establish a point. It just presents these figures, first in the glaring heat, then in the fading light of evening and lets them bicker, remember the past`and worry .about the future. All the acti.ng is good but Sheila Burrell has the aIlance to show stronger, more complex. motions than the others, love mixed with resentment, timidity with determination. It is not so much like a poem as like a poetic short story and did in- deed seem briefer than its two and half hours.
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