'Mousetrap' more than a prototypical whodunit

PRINCETON - What's a significant, trend-setting place like the McCarter Theatre Center doing with Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap? Doesn't it have more miles on it than a FedEx truck? Is it suddenly so out that it's in?

Oh, I see. It's The 39 Steps-meets-Airbnb. But better.

Longtime McCarter artistic director Emily Mann is a recent Christie convert, and calls her an overlooked "literary genius." Having seen the excellent new production directed by Adam Immerwahr at its Friday opening, I wouldn't go that far. But the play is more than just a prototypical whodunit, and this production - while lacking the suspense of modern thrillers - does have good laughs without the stale camp of The 39 Steps. It's a date play that allows you to respect yourself in the morning.

Set-up ingredients are familiar: The guest house (thus my Airbnb reference) is isolated by a blizzard, an odd gallery of guests with big secrets arrives, and a murder has happened before the plot officially starts (cleverly portrayed in this production with a shadow-play prologue).

Thanks to a notebook, supposedly lost by the killer, two more murders may be on the way, related to a child-abuse occurrence from years before.

The subtext is about the shedding of memory: Premiered in 1952, the play arrived when England was turning the page on World War II. Christie's prescient moral was that events of the past never go away. So the play is about a massive loss of sanity amid untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.

Christie also asks whether we ever really know anybody in her gallery of Mousetrap strangers - to which our post-9/11 mindset brings a longing for certainty. Characters feel safe in their intuitive view of others, but find them dramatically changed when particular traits are re-ordered in a more sinister light.

The atmospheric production has a parlor with tall candelabras, taller curtains, and quaint furniture, though with some character types taken a bit further than what was possible in 1952. Gay and lesbian overtones are a bit of a leap with the Christopher Wren character, but less so with Miss Casewell. Still, everybody has a well-defined place in the play's chess board.

Having seen some of the actors elsewhere, I think it's fair to say they're under-utilized in this well-oiled ensemble that has neither stars nor secondary roles. Enumerating their virtues would risk giving away the plot twists. So let's just list the actors: Jessica Bedford, Adam Green, Andy Phelan, Sandra Shipley, Graeme Malcolm, Emily Young, Thom Sesma and Richard Gallagher.

dstearns@phillynews.com