Review: CCT’s Production of Mousetrap
Overall rating: 4/5
College towns everywhere are home to incredibly talented people. Laramie is no exception. This weekend we attended the Centennial Community Theater’s production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Having never attended one of CCT’s productions before, we were expecting country-bumkin theater. What we got instead was a treat.
There is not much point in discussing the play itself. The Mousetrap is a classic play, now running for five decades. It is, I hear, the longest running play of any kind, which is absolutely amazing. If you haven’t seen it, you really should make the effort to go. Even if you don’t remember seeing it, it’s likely that you’ll find it eerily familiar. If nothing else, you were probably forced to read it in a high school or college lit class.
The real surprise was the production. It all starts with dinner at the Centennial Trading Post. The dinner choices were typical: steak, chicken, or veggie. Like most customers, we opted for the steak which may have been a mistake. But no matter. After dinner we were treated to the play. The stage was an experience like no other. To enter our chairs, we literally had to go through the stage. We were so close to the action that I worried about tripping the actors with my feet! Shoot, we were close enough to determine which actor desperately needed to try a new deodorant. And there was a most unfortunate column in the middle of the room that obstructed our view of the stage. It was, in other words, perfect.
The really charming part are the actors and actresses. The leading actress was more than a little pregnant. I was constantly amazed by the ease with which she moved. She was magnificent, as were the other actors. What I enjoyed most was the realization that these players were not doing this in the hope of getting a job in Hollywood. These were real people with pedestrian jobs—one of them was an economics professor. The only reason they were there was because of love, the love of theater. If you can’t support theater like this, if you can’t support people like these, you just don’t love the arts.
The production runs through this coming weekend. If you haven’t seen it, it’s probably not too late to get tickets. Go!