'The Mousetrap' whodunit at Erasmus Huis

By Claudine Frederik

JAKARTA (JP): To Agatha Christie's fans, The Mousetrap, one of the many "whodunits" the writer wrote in her lifetime, would not have an unfamiliar ring to it. Although the story has not reached the popularity of The Orient Express as a book, The Mousetrap delighted many a viewer when it ran for more than 40 years on stage in London.

On Aug. 19 and 20, The Mousetrap, will be staged at Erasmus Huis at 7:30 p.m. The play, sponsored by The Jakarta Post, is directed by Oei Eng Goan, a desk editor of the newspaper.

The Post, has embarked on other purposes than newspapering alone. One of it is to promote culture and (wo)men of culture.

Most of Miss Christie's stories are set in a mundane, everyday environment enlivened with people of the British middle class, once described by a non-descript British writer as a dull and colorless social group. They may be teachers, retired officers, hotel or inn-keepers, writers, and so on.

The genius of Miss Christie's writings comes to the fore when she brings to life the atmosphere of Britain's infamous middle class with all its rhetorics. Through her stories people in other parts of the world become acquainted with British life in its purest sense of the word, and to some extent, to the way the British mind works.

No less famous than the stories are the plays and films adapted from the writer's original writings. Agatha Christie's stories are all without exception about murder cases which theoretically could never have been committed.

Tension is built up in the subsequent unravelings of the murder. This is especially emphasized in the dialogue of Agatha Christie's plays and films which an audience has to lend all its ears to. Because it is from the dialogue that the viewer may become aware of the first murder clue.

Stage plays are quite popular with Jakartans who have been treated over the years with such epics as Machbett and many more, albeit, their performance has been in the Indonesian language.

The Mousetrap, however, is going to be conducted in the English language by nine Indonesian students.

The idea to perform English plays in their original language caught Oei Eng Goan about three years ago when he staged his first play in Taman Ismail Marzuki before large audiences especially interested in the English language.

In this respect, The Mousetrap, is not going to disappoint prospective viewers when it is launched in a few days. If previously the English dialogue sounded somewhat stilted and were pronounced in quite un-english ways, the stage director has now greatly improved this side of the play.

The Mousetrap is a two-act murder mystery depicting at the beginning of the play, a young married couple, Giles and Mollie Ralston. The couple were running a guesthouse, "Monkswell Manor", which was located at a good distance from London. While making final preparations for the arrival of their guests, they caught the news on the radio that a woman had been strangled to death in London.

One by one, the guests started to arrive at the manor. The first was Christopher Wren, a neurotic young man with odd manners. The second guest was Ms. Boyle, a very bad tempered woman, followed by Major Metcalfe, a middle-aged officer. The last guests to arrive were Miss Casewell, a masculine woman, and Mr. Paravicini, a flamboyant foreigner.

It was an odd bunch which gathered at the manor of Giles and Mollie Ralston. Everyone of them had their own peculiarities which they displayed with bad tempered remarks, rude manners, without any consideration for the young couple who were being given a hard time.

Despite their guests' behavior, all would have ended well for Giles and Mollie Ralston, if the police had not called to inform that they had sent a Detective Sergeant Trotter to the manor in connection with a psychopath strangler who, they thought, was loitering near the guesthouse.

The detective arrived later in the evening and started with his investigations. Trotter strongly implicated that one of the guests might be in danger, but, his warnings were thrown in the wind until one of the guests fell victim and got murdered. After the incident, the guests grew suspicious of one another and began to panic.

Trotter was convinced that the murderer had to be found among the guests. In fear that another murder might be committed, he assembled the guests in one room for further questioning.

The mystery was solved when Trotter reconstructed the murder at the Manor.