When Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap opened in London's West End on November 25, 1952, few theatre-goers anticipated that the play would become a fixture for the next half-century. The Times of London review of the play's opening at the Ambassadors Theatre noted that "the piece admirably fulfills the special requirements of the theatre." That is, there is a good assortment of suspects and potential victims assembled on stage and each is easily identifiable. The reviewer for the Times noted that these people "provide the colour, the mystification, the suspects, and the screams" and that "all fit the play as snugly as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle." The audience would find that The Mousetrap fits nicely into the Christie tradition: "No sooner have we, following the precepts of our old friend Poirot, peered back into the past for this is what is known, rather grandly, as a revenge tragedy...