Theatre: The Mousetrap

The Cheyenne Little Theatre is putting on a production of the Mousetrap for 7 days, Nov 11, 12, and 13th, Nov 17, 18, 19, and 20. (So Friday through Sunday, with an extra, half-price performance on Thursday the 17th.)

My sister and I went to see it on Saturday the 12th.

We had some trepidation going in; we are both theatre goers of long-standing and have seen plays in Minneapolis's Theatreland, including the Guthrie; London's West End, Stratford-Upon Avon (not that that's saying much - I much preferred the Guthrie Theatre's version of Richard II to that at Stratford's, for example, but I digress), and so we were concerned about the quality of the acting. Cheyenne is a town of about 60,000 people (compared to 400,000 in Minneapolis/St. Paul, 7 million in London, etc)) so of course it has a much smaller pool of actors to draw from.

But we were pleasantly surprised. The actors, while amateurs, were very professional, very good. While some of the English accents were better than others, they were all serviceable (heckuva lot better than Kevin Costner's non-existent one in Robin Hood, for example).

I was awash in nostalgia the entire performance. The Mousetrap is the first play I ever saw, way, way back when I was 14 years old, in the West End of London, and I have seen it many times since, Many, many times. Performances put on by both professional and amateur companies. But it had been about 10 years since the last time I'd seen it, so I was amused to realize that I still knew every line of dialog.

The Atlas Theatre "is what it is," as the saying goes. The main floor has hard, stand alone chairs around tables, and the chairs weren't that comfortable. My sister and I were right up against the edge of the stage, which was great in one sense as my eyes aren't what they used to be, but in another sense was extremely hard on the neck as we had to keep looking upwards to watch the action.

The Cast
Molly Ralston - Freya Butterfield
Giles Ralson - Rory Mack
Christopher Wren - Chris Arneson
Mrs. Boyle - Carol Serelson
Major Metcalf - Dale Williams
Miss Casewell - Shelley Russell
Mr. Paravacini - Jon Jelinek
Detective-Sergeant Trotter - Justin Batson
The Director - Keith Neville (brought in from England!)