The Mousetrap Fiasco

So...I've had an interesting day.

Things sailed smoothly until about 3:20 this afternoon. School had proceeded normally, as school goes, and I'd made a fair amount of progress on my STAC Art project. After school, I endured the arduous thirty-foot hike from the STAC room to the auditorium, where we were supposed to have had auditions for the dramatic production, The Mousetrap. For those of you who don't know, this play was written by Agatha Christie, perhaps the greatest mystery writer of all time, responsible for such masterpieces as And Then There Were None. As for the play itself...I can't reveal much without spoiling it, but it is masterfully written, and contains Christie's habit of throwing off the audience/reader. So there we were, filling out the audition forms, and looking forward to getting up on stage...when Mrs. Latham, our director, came back from the music office with bad news. Apparently, Agatha Christie somehow made it illegal to perform The Mousetrap within seventy-five miles of Manhattan. Why? Who knows? She didn't ban any of her other works from Broadway. We have permission to perform Ten Little Indians (based upon And Then There Were None), according to the music office. What's more, Herricks has performed The Mousetrap in years past, or so I've been lead to believe. And I can't find any source online that mentions the play being banned in the New York area, and it isn't for lack of trying. So why can't we put on the damn show? The only thing I know for certain is that this whole fiasco has definitely lowered my opinion of Ms. Christie.