Springing the trap

Not everyone who enters the Shawano Community High School auditorium next week will come out alive.

An estate home turned into a hotel, a terrible winter storm and a children’s rhyme about three blind mice will form a recipe for murder as the high school’s theater department performs “The Mousetrap,” a murder mystery written by famed author Agatha Christie, from April 9-11.

The play takes place at Monkswell Manor in the 1940s, where a young couple plans to operate a hotel from a late aunt’s home outside of London. As guests start to arrive, a snowstorm hits the area, rendering the roads impassable.

However, a police detective manages to make it through the storm on skis, and he reveals that the person who murdered a young woman named Maureen Lyon is believed to be at the manor. The unsettling news is confirmed to be true after a female guest is found dead in the main hall.

Each of the guests has a secret to hide, but which secret could lead to unmasking the killer? That is what audiences have to figure out.

“I’ve told students from day one, ‘Don’t reveal how it ends,’” director Alexander Konen said. “Some people took it so far that they won’t rehearse their lines with their parents because they want it to be a surprise on opening night.”

Konen said he wanted a murder mystery to be the school’s spring production, but he originally had his heart set on performing “Clue,” a show based on the popular board game. When he learned that the Box in the Wood Theatre Guild planned to perform the musical version this summer, he looked through other plays and came across “The Mousetrap.”

“I think a lot of people will relate to it, not only because it’s a classic and it does take place somewhat historically, but because it’s got that entire psychological level,” Konen said. “All those people that sit and watch their dramas at night, this should appeal to them because it’s got murder, it’s got mystery, and you don’t figure out who it is until the very end.”

The director will ask patrons during the show to not reveal who the killer is to others who might attend subsequent performances. Konen said that announcement will likely be made as the house rules of no video recordings and no flash photography are announced.

Konen is not having the actors speak in British accents.

“I said, ‘Let’s focus on the content of the words. What are they saying?’” Konen said. “My experience is no one would have the same British accent.”