The Mousetrap Tickets at St Martin's Theatre
A young couple open her aunt's old manor house as a guest house. Five strangers arrive, the snow closes the road behind them, and the policeman who skis in tells them one of the five is a murderer.
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020 7193 9050 · Monday to Saturday 8am to 8pm, Sunday 10am to 8pm
Help choosing your seat
Who Is The Mousetrap Best For?
- Anyone who likes trying to work out the whodunnit before the detective. That is the whole evening. Everybody on stage is a suspect, the clues are there.
- First-time West End visitors who want the famous classic. It has been running since 1952 and it enters its 75th year in November 2026. There is no other ticket in London that comes with that.
- Mixed groups and families with children of about ten and up. You need no preparation, there is no music, no spectacle and nothing to catch up on. It is a story told straight.
- People who like old things done properly. The period detail is the pleasure here as much as the plot: ration books, a temperamental boiler, a wireless in the corner.
It is probably not for you if you want a big modern production. This is a single room, a handful of actors and a plot, played the same way it was played in 1952. The Mousetrap is either exactly what you want or exactly what you don't.
We do not tell you how it ends
At the final curtain the cast ask the audience to keep the secret, and for seventy-four years people mostly have. So you will not find the ending on this page. It is one of the few shows left where knowing nothing is genuinely better than knowing something.
What happens
Mollie Ralston has inherited Monkswell Manor from an aunt, and she and her husband Giles have just opened it as a guest house. Four guests are expected. A fifth, Mr Paravicini, turns up unannounced after his car gets stuck.
By evening the road is closed. The wireless carries news of a murder in London, and Detective Sergeant Trotter arrives on skis to say the killer left a notebook naming this house.
Seven people in one room, one of them a murderer, and a policeman who cannot leave either.
Dates & tickets
Tickets and Best Seats
All-in pricing, the price you see is what you pay.
Standard seats run from around £30 up to around £80, rising to around £100 on weekends and through peak weeks. Premium tickets start from around £80.
Worth knowing before you pick a date: Monday is not the cheapest night here. At most West End theatres the start of the week is where the bargains are. At St Martin's Monday is priced with Friday, and the cheapest seats of the week are on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Where to sit
The best seats are the side blocks of Stalls row G, seats 1 to 5 and 18 to 22. Those seats have open floor in front of them, which gives them legroom nothing else in the Stalls has. The middle of the row misses out: a short row called FF fills the space in front of it.
Rows D to H in the centre of the Stalls are the best stretch for the view. The Dress Circle is the choice if you would rather look slightly down at the stage, or if 29 steps down is more than you want.
The one to skip is Upper Circle row E, and not for the view: it has the tightest legroom in the building.
In a theatre this size nothing is far away, so a cheap seat here buys more than a cheap seat usually does. Our St Martin's Theatre guide goes through all three levels row by row.
Group and school bookings
Rates are available for groups of 10 or more, and there are education rates for school groups.
Seating plan
Dates & tickets
Booking now
St Martin's Theatre
West Street, London WC2H 9NZ. A small theatre of 564 seats over three levels, two or three minutes from Leicester Square station. The Mousetrap has played here since March 1974, which makes it the longest residency of any show in any theatre in London.
Getting here. Leave Leicester Square station by the Charing Cross Road exit and walk north towards Cambridge Circus; West Street is the short street on your right. Covent Garden is about 5 minutes, Charing Cross about 10. Buses 14, 19, 24, 29 and 176 stop at Cambridge Circus, two minutes away.
Worth knowing before you go. There is no cloakroom, and bags are checked on the door. The bars sell snacks and drinks, but no hot food or hot drinks are allowed anywhere in the theatre. It is cashless, so bring a card. Arrive 15 to 20 minutes before, no later. Late arrivals wait for a suitable break, which can be up to 20 minutes in, and in a whodunnit that is the stretch where every suspect and every clue gets set up.
Access. The Dress Circle is the level to book if stairs are difficult; the Stalls are 29 steps down and the Upper Circle 28 up, and there is no lift. Audio description is available, through a headset you reserve in advance. Some performances are captioned. Access bookings are handled by the theatre's own team rather than by us.
Everything else about the building is in our St Martin's Theatre guide: the seating plan level by level, the step counts, the bars, and where to eat within a few minutes' walk.
Address
West Street, London WC2H 9NZ
Nearest Tube
Leicester Square
Cast and Creative Team
The cast changes once a year, by tradition, around the end of November. This is the company as of August 2026.
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Mollie Ralston | Saranna Parlone |
| Giles Ralston | Ben Riddle |
| Christopher Wren | Stefan Chanyaem |
| Mrs Boyle | Joanne Henry |
| Major Metcalf | James Staddon |
| Miss Casewell | Anna Rawlings |
| Mr Paravicini | Dugald Bruce-Lockhart |
| Detective Sergeant Trotter | Ben Galvin |
Understudies and covers: Barnaby Jago, Richard Parnwell, Nancy Doubledee, Clive Marlowe, Bella Farr, and Paddy Duff as emergency cover.
Director Denise Silvey. Casting director Ellie Collyer-Bristow CDG. Assistant director Richard Parnwell. Sound designer Max Perryment. Fight director Philip D'Orleans. Associate costume designer and head of wardrobe Janet Hudson-Holt.
More than 400 actors had played these eight parts by 2012. Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim were the first, in 1952.
News and Reviews
It turns 75 in November
The play opened in the West End on 25 November 1952, so it enters its 75th year in November 2026. It marked its 30,000th performance in March 2025 and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest theatrical run. The London run is booking to 17 July 2027.
A 75th anniversary UK tour opened on 3 September 2026 and is playing more than 25 towns and cities into the summer of 2027, so you no longer have to come to London to see it. We sell London theatre only, so book a tour date with the theatre itself.
What the critics said
The play is old enough that most of its reviews are history. The most recent full round came when it reopened on 17 May 2021, the first day it was allowed to after fourteen months closed, and the reviews were as much about theatre restarting as about Christie. Dominic Cavendish in the Telegraph wrote that he "loved every sympathy- and suspicion-shifting minute of it". Quentin Letts in The Times enjoyed the period: "delicious archaic details include baked apples, ration books, a coked-up boiler and stockings from Gibraltar." Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail landed on "reassuringly silly fun", which is praise with a ceiling and a fair description of the evening.
In 1952 the critics could not agree either. The Manchester Guardian called it "a middling piece" whose characters were "built entirely of clichés". The Times found the plot "elaborately skilful". And the Bradford Observer, of all papers, got it right: "this play should run for a long time in the metropolis."
What the critics said has the full picture, 1952 against 2021.
Two questions people ask, and we can answer both
Why has there never been a film? The contract will not allow one until the West End production has been closed for six months. John Woolf bought the film rights in 1956 and never got to use them. There is, however, See How They Run (2022), a film about a film of The Mousetrap failing to get made.
Who gets the money? Agatha Christie signed the rights to her grandson Mathew Prichard as a ninth birthday present. Since 1995 the income has gone through a trust he founded into arts charities, mostly in Wales.
The Mousetrap
St. Martin's Theatre