Gossip

Agatha Christie’s Daughter Reborn in West End???

The Mousetrap may soon have some more Agatha Christie company in the West End. We hear that A Daughter’s a Daughter, a little known play-turned-novel penned by Christie under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, is being dusted off for a fresh outing.

Billed as a mother-daughter psychological drama, A Daughter’s a Daughter centres on widow Ann Prentice, whose life with her daughter Sarah is turned upside down when she meets a new man, Richard. But Richard and Sarah don’t get on, jeopardising Ann’s chance at happiness.

Though Christie originally conceived the story as a play in the 1930s, A Daughter’s a Daughter first saw the light of day when published as a novel in 1952. The subsequent stage version has only had one notable week of performances – at the Theatre Royal Bath in 1954 – and has since all but disappeared.

Amongst the names in this new production are Jenny Seagrove and Honeysuckle Weeks. We hear that it’s poised to open before the end of the year at Trafalgar Studios. If so, it definitely won’t come close to matching The Mousetrap’s ongoing, record-breaking run: the Trafalgar Studio 1 scheduling gap between the close of Lenny Henry’s Othello (last performance on 12 December) and the transfer of The Caretaker with Jonathan Pryce (first performance on 12 January) only allows for a month.