Inglese (testo di attualità)

Esame di stato di liceo linguistico - 2003

Tema di: lingua straniera

Testo di attualità – lingua inglese

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Sir Peter Saunders – shrewd producer of “The Mousetrap”

Although he was one of the more prolific theatrical impresarios of his era, Peter Saunders inevitably became known for one production only, as he acknowledged wryly in the title of his 1972 autobiography, The Mousetrap Man.

Opening in 1952, in the age of austerity, with rationing still in force, Agatha Christie’s thriller The Mousetrap in 1971 became the world’s longest-running play and, although Saunders sold the rights to Stephen Waley-Cohen when he gave up active management and his Maiden Lane office in the Vaudeville Theatre (which he once owned), it runs on still at the St Martin’s Theatre in London.

There are some who would argue that the play, set as it is in an isolated, snowbound country house, with detective dramas on the “wireless” and with funny foreigners such as Mr. Paravicini among the guests, is actually a paradigm of post-war England, a tight little island forced to adapt to change (the house’s gallant owners, Giles and Molly Railton, have been forced by economics to turn it into an hotel).

Saunders would have had none of such fanciful metaphorical theories. When asked the secret of its continuing success, he said, “It’s a guessing game, with suspense and comedy, and the whole family can enjoy it.”

For him, Agatha Christie provided just what the West End needed, good solid entertainment (he presented many of Christie’s plays).

His early experience as journalist and as press-agent was an important factor in the play’s development into a phenomenon; Saunders shrewdly capitalised on anything that might help publicise the show, including holding an annual party at the Savoy, always to lavish press coverage, to clock up every extra year of the run.

He had never aimed to be an innovative producer.

After education at Oundle School, near Peterborough, he briefly worked in films as a cameraman before Fleet Street experience and Army service during the Second World War, when he ended up as a Captain.

Troop shows encouraged his managerial leanings and he presented his first West End production, Fly Away, Peter (St James’s), not a great success, in 1947.

It was the eye-opening experience of touring Christie’s Black Coffee (1950) to remarkable box-office receipts that persuaded him to turn to more of her work.

He enjoyed a moderate success with The Hollow (Fortune, 1951) before hitting paydirt when a young Richar