Review: Hiirenloukku
What is a performance that makes you shiver several times What
is a performance that makes you shiver several times and make the audience scream out loud in the theatre? It is a performance that has been performed for decades in London, in Finnish amateur theatres and now in the capital’s professional theatre.
It is, of course, The Mousetrap, written by Agatha Christie . The suspense play, which is now being seen on the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, causes chilling and fearful feelings in theatre viewers throughout the play.
In this blog post, I will go through what those moments of horror were really like and how the theatre experiencer is guided from the stage.
Detailed presentation information can be found here: https://hkt.fi/esitykset/hiirenloukku/
Ticket received.
What is the performance that makes you shiver several times?
Before I go into more detail about the performance, I have to remind you that I can’t tell and describe too much about the parts of the performance that could affect your theatre experience. That is, if you read this text before the performance. If you’ve already come to read this after seeing The Mousetrap , you’ll surely catch what I’m writing about – even if it’s a slightly broader description than I’m used to writing in my blogs before.
Nor will I reveal the final solution of the performance or any other relevant moments for the performance. About the plot, what is said on HKT’s website:
“Mollie and Giles are a young, happy couple. They have a very special day ahead of them, they are opening a Monkswell boarding house in an old heritage mansion in the middle of the peace of the countryside. When everything is ready for the customers, a snowstorm hits and the plans are disrupted. At the same time, the police are broadcasting on the radio about a murder in London, the perpetrator of which is being sought.
When the customers finally get through the storm to the warmth of the manor, the atmospheric boarding house comes to life. Mollie and Giles are given a demanding group of guests to serve, and not everyone seems to get along. Just before the snow surrounds the mansion and blocks the roads, the police arrive to warn the murderer who has left a message: the next victim is to be found in the Monkswell boarding house.
How does a murderer get from the middle of a snowstorm to the mansion? Or is he already there?”
This is the starting point of the proposal.
From theatre spectator to theatre experiencer
At the beginning of the text, I used the term theatre experiencer, and it is certainly worth specifying a little what I mean by that. Theatre spectator is a more familiar term for a person visiting the theatre, but lately I’ve been wondering if it could be something else? Theatre is a multisensory experience and is not limited to looking, i.e. the sense of sight (although it is the strongest sense in theatre). The mousetrap was felt throughout the body and it takes over the human bodily experience already in the first seconds. The information produced by the senses about the different areas of the play is a comprehensive bodily experience that is not limited to watching.
In the mousetrap , the senses of the theatre experiencer are sensitised in several different sensory areas, so that the person sitting on the red velvet benches has not only the sense of sight – but all the senses.
Eradj Nazimov , who is responsible for the sound design, creates shockingly cutting and deeply penetrating soundscapes on the Arena stage, which combine with Petteri Heiskanen’s lighting design to create arresting and frightening moments on stage. Mousetrap The director for the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre is Miika Muranen, whose rhythmic and tension-maintaining precision creates an opportunity for the actors to surrender to the situations in the story.
The main couple of the play are Elina Keinonen and Severi Saarinen, whose endearing beginnings become more rocky the further the play goes. The guests at the inn they run are Sanna-June Hyde, Sauli Suonpää, Joel Hirvonen, Helena Haaranen, Santeri Kinnunen and Risto Kaskilahti.
During the intermission, my friend and I pondered that each of them could be a murderer.
About the plot structure of suspense plays
An essential part of the suspense play is to find the suspect. They try to mislead it and cover up the clues in various ways. However, before that, you need to develop a plot and introduce the characters.
Perhaps it is the duration of the introduction of the characters that is the challenge of Mousetrap . In order for the plot to start properly and start to unravel the situation, it must first be prepared. There are 8 characters in the mousetrap whose backstories must be presented and their behavior motivated.
There is nothing strange about this, and on the other hand, it cannot be changed, because then something essential is left out of the script and the story leads nowhere.
This perspective applies more broadly to the plot structures of suspense plays, where the duration of character introductions in relation to the action itself and the ending is much longer than in plays, where the plot lines start almost from the beginning.
On the other hand, the fact that Mousetrap has been performed so much over the decades speaks of its universal level of solving unclear issues, as in this case: who is the murderer. After all, as humans, we are inclined to live together in harmony with other members of our flock.
What about the cold shivers and screams?
It was intoxicating to experience the excitement among the audience, where everyone was focused on the action of the stage in a completely different way than, for example, in plays of another genre. The intensity between the actors and the audience was palpable at times, and sometimes the tension could have been cut with a knife.
There were a few moments in the play when cold shivers ran down my spine from the sheer horror that had been built into the play in an excellent way.
The audience’s reactions could also scare and increase the intensity of the atmosphere. When something surprising happened on stage, some of the audience members, the theatre experiencers, reacted to the incident by screaming out loud. Or was it one of the gems of sound design?
In general, The Mousetrap is a play that is suitable for detective fans and those who want to see something else in the theatre instead of drama or comedy. This play can also be a good first contact with the world of theatre.
What if a theatre spectator were called a theatre witness?
I will discuss the term ‘theatre experiencer’ in more detail in the publication Me Teatterissa, Teatteri Meissä, which will be published in November, for which I have had the opportunity to write a reflective essay. I approach the topic from the perspective of bodily experience and bodily identification. The collection is a work written by the members of the T-effect, which reflects on “us Finns as spectators of the theatre, together and separately.”