by Kate Stine

Agatha Christie's stage drama, The Mousetrap, is the world's longest running play. This phenomenal production opened in 1952 and shows no sign of closing. It has become as much a London tourist destination as Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London.

But The Mousetrap is certainly not Agatha Christie's only contribution to theater. As well as writing 16 plays herself, she has provided inspiration for many other playwrights over the years.

The first theatrical performance of a Christie mystery occurred at the Prince of Wales Theatre on May 15, 1928. Alibi was an adaptation by Michael Morton of Christie's 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and it also marked the first stage appearance of Hercule Poirot, played by the young Charles Laughton.

Disappointed by this production, Christie shortly thereafter made her own fledgling effort. Black Coffee* opened in London on December 8, 1930, with film star Francis L. Sullivan playing Poirot. However, Christie felt that her great detective's personality was too overpowering for the stage, and deleted him from her future adaptations.

Christie's next produced play, Ten Little Niggers (retitled in the U.S. as And Then There Were None or Ten Little Indians), opened in 1943. Deciding that romance was required, she reworked her book plot so that two characters survive to create a future together. The many film versions of this story have retained the play's happy ending.

After that came several adaptations from successful novels Appointment with Death (1945) and Murder on the Nile (1946) adapted from the popular Death on the Nile. The Hollow (1951) enjoyed a run of 376 performances but this success would pale in comparison to Christie's next, unprecedented, theatrical triumph.

On November 25, 1952, a new thriller called The Mousetrap made its debut at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. In this ingeniously entertaining tale, a group of people snowbound in a Berkshire guest house are terrorized by a murderer bent on revenge.

Starring Richard Attenborough and his wife, Sheila Sim, the play received favourable notices from the start, although no one suspected its future success. Christie herself predicted it would run eight months. Many years later she would attribute its continued success to the fact that "there is a bit of something in it for almost everybody."  While that is true, The Mousetrap is also a superbly constructed mystery, irresistibly suspenseful from its very first moment.

The very next year, Christie had another hit on her hands. As the curtain fell on the debut performance of Witness for the Prosecution at the Winter Garden Theatre on October 28, 1953, it received a wildly enthusiastic standing ovation. After 468 performances in London, the production moved to New York for an even longer run.

Next up was another hit, Spider's Web* (1954), a humorous mystery play written expressly for Margaret Lockwood, a popular British actress of the time.  Although less well known than some of her other plays, it ran for an impressive 774 performances.  Of Christie's remaining plays, only Toward Zero (1951) and The Unexpected Guest* (1958) could be counted as big popular successes.

Like all playwrights, Agatha Christie had her flops and short runs, but her name on a marquee has long exercised a tremendous attraction for the public. The theater historian, J.C. Trewin has, rightly, referred to her work as "a Midas gift to the theatre."

Agatha Christie retains her ability to surprise.  A tattered copy of a long-lost Agatha Christie play was found in Canada.  Written in 1931 and intended for the Embassy theatre in London, it mysteriously vanished and was never performed.  Rescued from a pile of dusty scripts Chimneys received its belated world premiere in Calgary, Canada in 2003. 

Kevin Elyot's new adaptation of And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie's classic thriller, opened on the West End Stage in October 2005.  With Steven Pimlott directing and a star cast on board, this was a compelling, uncompromising and disturbing new production which received great reviews in the UK national press.

In the UK, Agatha Christie Ltd has an exclusive professional theatre partnership with The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, which tours the UK's major regional theatres with yearly classic productions. She continues to be one of the most popular mystery playwrights for local theatre companies around the world.

Plays in print can be purchased from Samuel French Publishers

*Black Coffee, Spider's Web and The Unexpected Guest were later novelised by Charles Osborne.