Here’s to Agatha Christie. Few creators in any art form have so dominated their chosen genre as to have defined its parameters and established a formula that’s been followed by everyone in her wake.

Ever experienced a mystery in which a variety of characters are introduced, one of them is murdered, and an inquisitive detective leads us down a twist-filled path dotted with revelations, ultimately gathering the suspects, retracing the crime and revealing the culprit? Dame Agatha popularized that. Ever played a game of “Clue”? That’s built upon the Christie template.

But fiction wasn’t her only form. She also wrote plays, including the longest-running production in theater history. “The Mousetrap” opened in London’s West End in 1952 and has been on the boards there ever since, save for a pandemic break. And now the Guthrie Theater has taken the play stateside with a polished production that opened Thursday night.

The cast in Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery, “The Mousetrap,” presented by the Guthrie Theater. The show runs through May 18, 2025 on the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Minneapolis theater. (Dan Norman / Guthrie Theater)

Are director Tracy Brigden and her design team offering up a radical reimagining of the classic murder mystery? Not at all. Their staging is about as faithful to the conventions of Christie and mid-20th-century English theater as one could hope. And, like a warm fire on a snowy winter night, this production is comforting and quite enjoyable in its own old-fashioned way.

So pervasive in popular culture is Christie that there’s a good chance that you think you’ve seen an adaptation of “The Mousetrap,” but you probably haven’t. It’s never been made into a film or television show, Christie insisting such ideas would have to wait until after the London production closed, so as to preserve the secret of the mystery’s resolution for as long as possible.

And audiences are sworn to secrecy during a closing curtain speech, so I won’t be the one to spoil it for you. I’ll just say that an English mansion has been converted into a guest house and its first night open for business has attracted five guests, each braving a snowstorm that will eventually make the manor inescapable. When a detective arrives in search of a suspect in a London murder, we watch as the potential motives and alibis unspool.

The Guthrie’s production is something of a throwback to an era when our entertainment wasn’t so dependent upon fast pace and constant stimulation. The fun comes not from relentless action but instead from watching these curious characters being brought to layered life. Each of the eight actors does a fine job with that, from Monette Magrath and Peter Christian Hansen as our newlywed hosts to Greg Cuellar as a flamboyant motormouth to Mo Perry’s take on a stuffy defender of conventional class differences.

While a big part of Christie’s brand is her way of creating master detectives – see Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple – Detective Sergeant Trotter is quite a different animal, an anxious neophyte to the art of crime cracking who’s learning as he goes. And Matthew Amendt brings a fascinating combination of confidence, vulnerability and a welcome shot of agitated energy to what could become too dry and droll a tale with a less committed cast.

Walt Spangler uses every inch of the Guthrie’s proscenium stage to make a grand living room of the space, full of big chandeliers and splendid little details. And Susan Tsu’s true-to-the-period costumes fit the characters perfectly. They help make this “Mousetrap” a show worth catching.

‘The Mousetrap’

When: Through May 18

Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 Second St. S., Mpls.

Tickets: $92-$17.50, available at 612-377-2224 or guthrietheater.org

Capsule: An old-fashioned evening of murderous escapism.

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