Steve Pratt chats to Clare Wilkie and Elizabeth Power about taking part in the historic 60th anniversary tour of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap

THE suspense of Agatha Christie’s most famous whodunit is proving a bit too much for some audience members as The Mousetrap travels the country on its first UK tour.

As befits a play that’s celebrating its 60th anniversary, the play is attracting, shall we say, a more mature audience (as well as youngsters eager to see what all the fuss is about) with this story of murder and mystery in a snowbound country guest house.

Cast member and ex-EastEnders actress Clare Wilkie reports half-a-dozen cases of people being taken ill, causing the show to be brought to a temporary halt while the cry “is there a doctor in the house?” rings out in the auditorium.

“People have fainted and been ill. It usually happens just before they find out whodunit,” she says.

Wilkie recalls she and fellow actor Steven France were the only characters on stage when they became aware of a disturbance in the auditorium. “We tried to tick over for a while, but it was pointless because of the noise in the audience.

We stopped but the curtain didn’t come down so we sheepishly walked off stage,” she recalls.

Eventually the performance was completed. Most theatregoers, it must be said, are thoroughly enjoying seeing the famous play. The run at Newcastle Theatre Royal was booking so heavily in advance that extra matinees were put on.

Wilkie is doing six months in the play as the mysterious Miss Casewell, a woman who, like everyone else in the murder mystery, has a guilty secret.

“I love touring because you go to places you’d never normally go and get to visit the country you live in,” she says. “But when we do ten shows in a week, we don’t get much chance to see anything.”

Miss Casewell is “a bit of a mystery – she’s definitely a suspect”, she says.

“In that era, it’s 1939, it was strange to see a woman wearing a suit and with short hair. She’s very mysterious.

Aloof. I don’t have to act very hard.”

The character is very self-contained, not showing much outward emotion unlike some of the other women in the play. “I am more stoic. I don’t think I could cry ten times a week,” she says.

“With television, you just have to get on with it. You might do 20 scenes a day.

In the theatre you have rehearsals and get in the moment because there’s no stopping and starting. If you cry on TV, you can use a tear stick.”

She auditioned five years ago for the role of guest house owner Mollie Ralston, but didn’t get it. So she’d seen the play when she auditioned again for Miss Casewell, although had already forgotten whodunit. “The fact that it’s lasted so long is that it’s a really good whodunit murder mystery. Although The Mousetrap is a murder mystery, there’s some comedy in it. It’s always nice to play a woman with wit. When you are in your 20s and do plays set in that era you’re playing a sweet young daughter, someone’s lover, someone’s wife.”

She was in EastEnders – as Sandra di Marco – for 18 months, which was longer than she expected but not long enough to become too identified with someone who was, she adds, not a strong character in her own right, but part of the di Marco clan. “Now 12 years later people recognise my face, but don’t know where from. It drives them nuts. They think they’ve gone to school with me or something. Sometimes I help them out.”

It wasn’t, she admits, one of her favourite jobs but she would never say she regretted doing it, not least because when she left she had the deposit for a flat. “But I think at that age – I was 26 when I started and 28 when I left – I was a late developer emotionally and you really need to know yourself,” she says.

She found being in the media spotlight “quite scary and I became a little paranoid”. It was like being in the Big Brother house, she says, but now she’d be able to cope with it.

The same company will be together for several months during The Mousetrap tour. She says she’s “probably known as the unsocial one” because she likes to go home after a show and watch films. “I don’t drink, so my way of releasing after a show is chocolate in bed,” she says.

The Mousetrap 60th anniversary tour: York Grand Opera House, May 6-11. Box Office: 0844-8713024 and atgtickets.com/york Darlington Civic Theatre, June 10-15. 01325-486555 and darlingtoncivic.co.uk Sunderland Empire (with cast changes), Oct 14-19. 0844-8713022 and atgtickets.com/sunderland