Images courtesy of Long Beach Playhouse.
Long Beach Playhouse will commence the second half of its 87th season with Agatha Christie’s murder mystery masterpiece, The Mousetrap, the community-supported theatre announced Monday. Directed by Jeff Brown, the production will be enacted on the Mainstage starting Saturday, January 16 and run through Saturday, February 13.
As the longest running theatrical production in history, The Mousetrap is an iconic play that has accumulated over 25,000 performances in London during the past 60 years. Based on a radio play called Three Blind Mice, which Christie originally wrote for the Queen Mary’s 80th birthday in 1947 and adapted it into a stage play years later, Long Beach Playhouse seeks to perform its forever entertaining twists and turns to local audiences.
“All I previously knew of Christie’s play before selecting [it] was its astonishing performance history and the legendary contract of secrecy forged between its performers and audiences,” stated Andrew Vonderschmitt, the Playhouse’s executive and producing artistic director. “What is it that we love so much about stories of murder and revenge? In the sixty-plus years since Agatha Christie first told the tale, our hunger for such material seems only to have grown more voracious and more sophisticated.”
Vonderschmitt says the classic play continues to pose provocative questions to today’s audiences even sixty years after its first introduction to the public. The viewer is taken on a wild ride through the mystery and thrill behind a snowstorm-stranded group of strangers as they attempt to solve a murder. It could have been anyone, the architect, the newlyweds or the strange man running from his past. The identity of the murderer is a stringently kept secret while audiences of The Mousetrap must take the pledge not to reveal “whodunit.”
The play will feature some tenacious Playhouse performers and some new to the Playhouse boards. In order of appearance: Andrea Pincus, Sri Chilukuri, Lee Samuel Tanng, Kathleen Fabry, Doug Seagraves, Anissa Loer, Cort Huckabone and Bradley Roa II. The Mousetrap is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC., according to the release.
Long Beach Playhouse is located at 5021 East Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA, 90804, right across from the Long Beach Recreation golf course. The Playhouse is community-supported theatre with programs and events that cut across age, gender, ethnic, and cultural boundaries.
Performances are 8:00PM on Friday and Saturday and 2:00PM on Sunday. The box office is open Wednesday through Saturday from 3:00PM to 8:00 pm and Sundays from 1:00PM to 2:00PM on scheduled matinees.
Tickets are available on the Long Beach Playhouse site, here or by calling 562.494.1014.