DEATHTRAP. Tour to 8 June.
Tour
DEATHTRAP
by Ira Levin
PW Production, PWT Ltd & Paul Farrah
in association with Kindling Productions Ltd
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
Tours to 8 June 2002
Review Hazel Brown, 12 February at Poole Arts Centre (until 16 February)
Ira Levin's classic murder mystery is intriguing and amusing, but does not engage the emotions.Throughout the play, Ira Levin pays homage to other masters of the thriller genre, particularly Shaffer's Sleuth. Certainly, the twists and turns of the plot – a five-hander on one set – maintain interest from beginning to end, as it includes garrotting, bludgeoning, crossbows, guns, knives, heart attacks, handcuffs and bodies buried in garden, all served up with a good dollop of humour and irony. However, the unsavoury characters fail to engage any sympathy, so it is the ingenuities and surprises of the plot that keep you in your seat to the end.
Sidney Bruhl, a writer of thrillers who has hit writers' block, receives a play through the post from a student. It is so good, he muses on the possibilities of passing it off as his own. David Soul is shabbily shifty as the burnt out author and Susan Penhaligon, a fragile beauty, is a doubtful Lady Macbeth to his schemes. Gerald Kyd plays the young writer, Clifford Anderson, who arrives to hear the master's opinions on his work, with beguiling leggy charm. Thus the scene is set for the mayhem to come.
The cast is completed by a 'mad' psychic, Helga ten Dorp, of indeterminate European origin and Bruhl's attorney, Porter Milgrim. The set is glorious – a beautiful New England converted stable, bathed in brilliant light; yet its walls, decorated with firearms, weaponry and theatre posters from Bruhl's earlier triumphs, provide hints of the menace to come. Each scene is introduced by projections onto a screen at the front of the stage: driving through the deserted countryside to the remote house in a Mercedes sports car; a manual typewriter printing out the frontispiece for a play – Deathtrap – and faces of the characters in the play; adding to the air of intrigue and isolation.
Sidney Bruhl: David Soul
Myra Bruhl: Susan Penhaligon
Clifford Anderson: Gerald Kyd
Porter Milgrim: Stewart Bevan
Helga ten Dorp: Becky Hindley
Director: Peter Wilson
Designer: Andrew Leigh
Design Assistant: Teg Davies
Sound: Rod Mead
2002-02-14 01:46:59