St Martin’s Theatre

At the end of this elegant Agatha Christie thriller, the newly uncovered homicidal maniac steps into a sinister spotlight and warns everyone never to reveal his or her identity. The production recently celebrated its 60th birthday and although Wikipedia and Stephen Fry have both blown the murderer's cover, there is a remarkable conspiracy of silence over 'The Moustrap'. The real mystery of the world's longest-running theatre show is not whodunit but, in its currently mediocre state, whydoit at all? 'The Mousetrap's ticket prices are the only element of this show that isn't stuck fast in the 1950s – although the actors' strained RP does make the odd break for the twenty-first century. Otherwise, this is a walking, talking piece of theatre history and – at £39 for a full-price stalls seat – the most expensive museum exhibit in London. Christie's neat puzzler of a plot is easier to defend. It has defied the inevitably mummifying process of more than 25,000 performances and still possesses an uncanny precision worthy of the mistress of murder's chilling geriatric creation, Miss Marple. In the 60 years since it premiered, its premise, in which six Cluedo-like middle-class stereotypes are imprisoned by snow in a country house while they try to fathom which of them is a raving murderer, has become a cliché, just as the authorities' response to adverse weather conditions (skiing coppers? In Berkshire?) have become a nostalgic memory. It's fascinating to glimpse the ghost of Peter...

This review is from Christmas 2023 – The Smartest Giant in Town returns for Christmas 2024.  So totally do Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler dominate the imaginations of Britain’s under-fives that not one, not two but three Donaldson-Scheffler adaptations are playing in the West End this Christmas. But if you and your offspring haven’t already been done in by ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ (nepo baby much?) at the Garrick or ‘Stick Man’ at Leicester Square, then it’s well worth throwing in your lot at St Martin’s Theatre with ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. Based on a (relatively underrated, imo) early work by the reigning king and queen of kids’ picture books, ‘The Smartest Giant…’ tells the story of George: an actually rather scruffy but extremely kind-hearted giant whose attempt to smarten up his act quickly unravels as he meets five animals in need. In George’s bucolic town, giants, regular-sized humans and talking animals coexist in apparent harmony amid rolling hills and cute cottages, making for plenty of opportunities for the show to mess about with scale with Kate Bunce’s economical set and props – especially when George hands over his suddenly-giant-sized clothes to the animals. Giraffe, goat, mouse, fox and dog are played by adorable puppets – designed by Judith Hope – based faithfully on Scheffler’s illustrations, and animated with a variety of accents by an energetically multitasking pair of actor/puppeteers. (The show is a transfer from Little Angel Puppet Theatre in...