Agatha Christie's 'Mouse Trap' premieres at a Prague Theatre this week

While in London, Agatha Christie's play 'The Mouse Trap' has been on without interruption for nearly 50 years, Prague's Theatre In Dlouha will premiere this world famous play on January 12th. Director Jan Borna said his goal was to stage the well-known play in a fresh and innovative way. Alena Skodova has more:

'The Mouse Trap' is the theatre's first premiere in the new year, and the Dlouha company are looking forward to it very much. The director Jan Borna told Radio Prague that he wanted to stage this very well-known play in a way which reflected his ideas about conversation-based drama. Mr. Borna said that he admired theatre based on the spoken word, where themes come and go within a conversation.

He confessed that he had never seen a performance of 'The Mouse Trap' but added that this fact made his staging entirely original. I asked Mr. Borna who had come up with the idea to put 'The Mouse Trap' on at the Dlouha theatre?

"It was my idea, because I love crime stories and I love Agatha Christie. At the same time, such a classic is something completely new for our theatre, because at this stage we have experience with various genres - our theatre is quite experimental. The actors and I came to the conclusion that we'd like to do something completely different, and 'The Mouse Trap' was an ideal opportunity. It was a real challenge."

Mr. Borna has been reading Agatha Christie's crime stories since the age of 15, he told me, and it's some 20 years since the first time he came across "The Mouse Trap" as a play, when it was published by a renowned Prague publishing house back in the early 1980s. Mr. Borna said that since that time he's known that the play is a real thriller with a fabulous ending.

The first Czech premiere of 'The Mouse Trap' was back in 1961. It has been staged 22 times in the Czech Republic, and its last premiere was in the year 2000 in Ostrava. It's the fourth staging of the play in Prague. The new staging's strong point is the actors, Mr. Borna told Radio Prague.

"If I wanted to get people to come and see 'The Mouse Trap', I would invite them to see the eight actors who perform in this play. They all cast their own personal spell and all of them have a gentle sense of humour. Although many people have seen the play elsewhere, this is something that might make them come to our theatre."

The new staging of 'The Mouse Trap also uses period music, which has been chosen and arranged by Jan Vondracek, an actor at the theatre and an outstanding musician. He used songs and melodies performed by Marilyn Monroe and Duane Eddie, as well as music by Igor Stravinsky.