The Housetrap is the final show in Guildford Shakespeare Company’s (GSC) amazing 18th Anniversary Year. This production is taking place in the beautiful Grade I listed West Horsley Place. I come here frequently but have never seen the house look as lovely as it looked tonight. Stage Manager Hannah Walker has done a fantastic job decorating and lighting this amazing house.
Eleanor Murton has written The Housetrap as she has all GSC’s whodunnits since they started during lockdown. She set the story in the 1920s when our obsession with Murder Mysteries began. This era is perfect because of the strict boundaries between upstairs and downstairs, each character knowing their place and exactly how to behave. The house has been dressed to represent this era and music from the time is playing as we take our seats.
On arrival at the house, honoured guests are allocated to different groups that they must stick to for the rest of the evening. This very busy evening begins in the Drawing Room, where the Dowager Duchess (Rosalind Blessed) and her faithful servant, the butler Fawkes give us the background to the evening’s proceedings. A séance is to be held to try to establish how Lady Amy Montague met her death. She was found at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, but was it really an accident?
After the introduction, each group moves to a different room in the house where they have the opportunity to examine clues and ask the suspects questions. After each of these sessions, we all return to the Drawing room for further performances before breaking out into groups again, each group with a different suspect each time. The cast is small, there isn’t much room for performers and audience in this ancient house, but all are brilliant. You can always rely on Rosalind Blessed to give a standout performance, and she is ably supported by Robert Maskell as the Butler, Fawkes and Hayden Mampasi as her son Sir Robert Montague, Duke of Surrey. Special mention must go to Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves who plays all three triplets whipping through countless costume changes and managing to remember which triplet she is at any one time.
The story has been cleverly peppered with clues and red herrings which the audience must pick through in order to work out who dunnit. The audience can ask the suspects anything they want which means every performance is unique. The running time is only 80 minutes, and I didn’t feel we had enough time to discuss the clues or interrogate the suspects before we had to move on. This evening, we did not manage to guess who the killer was, maybe we just didn’t ask the right questions. I am undecided as to whether one should or should not guess the correct killer in a whodunnit. I hope there is a good mix of wrong and right guesses going forward.
Review by Sally Knipe
It’s December 1922, and nestled in the tranquil countryside is the home of the recently married Sir Robert Montague… but when his wife’s body if found at the foot of the stairs and a snowstorm cuts everyone off from the outside world, tensions come to the fore, secrets are revealed and suddenly everyone is caught in… The Housetrap!
CAST
Hayden Mampasi – Sir Robert Montague
Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves – Millicent, Maria and Margot
Rosalind Blessed – Lady Elizabeth Montague
Robert Maskell – Fawkes
CREATIVE
Written by Eleanor Murton
Directed by Natasha Rickman
Costume Design by Anett Black
Sound Design by Matt Eaton
Guildford Shakespeare Company presents
THE HOUSETRAP
West Horsley Place, Guildford
2 to 22 December 2024
