In a city where most intimate productions run somewhere between three and six weekends (and if they’re very lucky may even make it to three months), The Mousetrap’s six-month run (with time off for summer vacation) gives it L.A. monster-hit status, a return visit to Crown City Theatre proving every bit as entertaining as the one made early in the run.

An almost entirely new cast add their own individual shadings to roles that West End actors have been playing nonstop for the past sixty-seven years.

 Returnee Cochrane once again makes for a quintessentially lovely English wife, this time opposite Neil Unger, whose 1950s leading-man looks and charm make him a terrific choice to play Giles, and Mullen’s mysterious, makeup-sporting Italian is as fabulously foreign amongst the Brits as ever.

Crown City favorite Michael Marchak joins the cast as an endlessly watchable Christopher Wren, just one of the suspects being investigated by the equally standout Blake Adams’s Detective Sergeant Trotter, whose spot-on Cockney accent is just one reason the role gets nailed with police-detective precision.

Kaitlyn Wolf’s Miss Casewell carries on a grand Christie tradition of mannish female suspects whose sexual inclinations dared not speak their name, Heidi Mendez’s battle-axe of a Mrs. Boyle never fails to amuse (or pass judgment), and Will Potter’s Major Metcalf is the embodiment of British military bearing and manner (if a good twenty years younger than the 50ish role has been written).

Age discrepancy still proves problematic for a suspect who needs to read at least ten years older than two of the others for reasons that become clear at the end, though another character’s eleventh-hour dialect switch does prove a particularly delicious touch and the holiday trimmings added to Joanne Lamb’s guesthouse set are just right for the season.

A second viewing suggests that Christie’s plotting may not have been as hole-free as you’d expect from a play that’s been running for nearly seventy years, but no amount of nit-picking can detract from the many pleasures of Agatha Christie’s most popular play, not the least of which is the fiendishly clever twist she puts on the mystery’s final solution, one that rivals those that had readers of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Murder On The Orient Express gasping at The Queen Of Crime’s audacious brilliance.

 The Mousetrap may be closing on December 30, but don’t be surprised if there’s still more life ahead for the Crown City smash. If any play can run forever, it’s The Mousetrap.

Crown City Theater, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood.
www.crowncitytheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
December 22, 2018