I've often wondered whyThe Mousetrap continues to pull in the punters (it's now been going for 60 years) and having finally seen it in a packed King's theatre this week I'm still wondering.  It pulled me in out of curiosity about that longevity but surely the vast majority of the audience were there because they expected to be right royally entertained. 

I'd suggest that if they wanted to see a show about a number of people trapped by inclement weather in a country house waiting for one of them to be murdered by one of the others they'd be much better off  petitioning the management of the King's to bring to town Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound.     

It's not that The Mousetrap is bad exactly.  It's just that it's bland, unexciting and creakingly old-fashioned.

By contrast The Cone Gatherers, a play drawn from a novel written in the 50s and which deals with landowners, their almost feudal relationship with their servants and the disdain both feel towards the lowest class of society didn't feel in the least old-fashioned. It received an excellent production and first class performances.  It's a long time since I read the novel so I'd forgotten the plot completely.  Thanks to Maurice Lindsay's History of Scottish Literature I can tell you that the play doesn't end in quite the same way as the novel but I don't think it traduces the author's intentions.  

It deserved a much larger house than it got, as did The Artist Man and The Mother Woman. The story of a mother's boy art teacher who decides he must find a wifie (that's not a mis-spelt communications network by the way) is billed as a black comedy and the description is well justified.  It's very well performed and has some very funny lines though they are a bit too ripe to reproduce here.

That was at The Traverse.  The Lyceum's current offering is A Midsummer Night's Dream,  You'd have thought that after 400 years all possible changes must have been rung on this well loved comedy.  But you'd be wrong.  For a start this production sets the action in the winter.

It's a lovely production, brim full of clever touches.  I've seen the play often and I'll probably see it many more times but I'll be surprised if I see a version that's more imaginative.