DEATHTRAP
DEATHTRAP, Darlinghurst Theatre Company at the Eternity Playhouse, 10 April-10 May 2015. Photography by Helen White; above - Sophie Gregg and Andrew McFarlane; right: Georgina Symes and Drew Fairley.
Director Jo Turner wants to make entertaining theatre that people really want to see – not such a common ambition when you think about it. And in his search for plays that fit the bill he came across Ira Levin’s great success from 1978, Deathtrap.
It was nominated for the year’s Tony for Best Play, but actually didn’t win. What did? Da by Hugh Leonard. And the other nominees were Neil Simon for Chapter Two and The Gin Game by DL Coburn. So why has Deathtrap gone on to become the “longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway’?
First of all, there are very few candidates for the genre “comedy-thriller” and second of all, even fewer are both funny and thrilling. Deathtrap is both and that’s remarkable in itself. To have an audience chuckling and guffawing one minute and then, collectively, leaping out of seats and shrieking in fright the next is a rare achievement. This production of the play achieves both.
Andrew McFarlane leads the cast as Sidney Bruhl, a once successful writer of Broadway thrillers whose dry spell has turned into a theatrical Gobi desert. He and his twitchy, frail wife Myra (Sophie Gregg) are fast running out of her money and his is no longer flowing through the royalty tap. A new play has arrived on his desk, written by a young hopeful who had attended one of Sidney’s summer seminars.
It’s a one-set, five character, two-act thriller that Sidney recognises as a sure-fire, bomb-proof success. It’s exactly what Sidney needs to put his name back up in lights. Unfortunately the byline is Clifford Anderson.
For a writer of murder mysteries and his wife the distance from fiction to actually doing it is alarmingly small. Sidney and Myra are only momentarily alarmed before she urges him to invite young Cliff over for a bit of kindly mentoring…
Clifford Anderson (Timothy Dashwood) is a likeable fellow in his faded denim jacket and jeans – very Youngblood Hawke as the unwitting victim and hero. But wait! This is also a one-set, five character, two-act play: here comes the next door neighbour and local psychic Helga ten Dorp (Georgina Symes) and, not long after, enter Sidney’s lawyer Porter Milgrim (Drew Fairley). What can possibly go wrong?
Killing Clifford turns out to be the least of the plot’s hair-raising possibilities. And, as the audience has plenty of time to contemplate Sidney’s collection of antique and theatrical weaponry – displayed over the massive fireplace in the Bruhls’ lovely rural Connecticut home – his death may or may not be the last. Indeed, in the kohl-rimmed, far-seeing eyes of Helga, he’s not even the half of it.
Deathtrap is cleverly and crazily plotted. It’s as if Midsomer Murders had crossed the Atlantic and fetched up on Broadway. As the frustrated faded star playwright Andrew McFarlane is all gravitas and knowing twinkles. He clearly relishes the play-within-a-play construct without stepping outside his world weary character and that alone makes the play work.
McFarlane is ably partnered by relative newcomer (to the non-commercial stage) Timothy Dashwood. His two-finger typing on the Smith-Corona portable is a crucial element of the role and he makes a believable 3-D person out of what might be a tricky 2-D character in lesser hands.
As the Dutch psychic (don’t begin to wonder why she’s living in rural New England, just think of it as a red herring) Georgina Symes is a ridiculously funny scene-stealer. If you think Helga’s too good a character to not come back in the second half, you’d be right – as Sidney says of a character who resembles her in Clifford’s play.
Sophie Gregg uses her sensible court shoes as the chief means of telling us all about Myra’s wifely qualities. She tiptoes about the place with the caution and lack of entitlement that can only come of being married to A Temperamental Genius. No matter that he has done little but stare at his typewriter for more than a decade, Myra is the perfect wife. Perhaps.
And Porter Milgrim is the perfect Broadway lawyer as portrayed by the pale grey three-piece suited Drew Fairley. He affords Sidney the means of signalling vital clues and offering up yet more smelly herrings while throwing his own contribution into the ring. It’s an unselfish and effective portrayal.
The other star of the show is Michael Hankin’s set. As already mentioned, Deathtrap is set in one room: the comfortable study of the Bruhls’ country retreat. Hankin has taken the play at face value and the decor is elegant American rural late ‘70s: a brick feature wall, a conversation pit, lots of polished timber, but no Marimekko and no shag pile. It’s wittily lit by Verity Hampson – occasional lights on occasional tables with slub linen shades on ceramic bases – and she makes much of the Hitchcock-timely slashes of lightning.
The lightning baton is taken up by composer and sound designer Marty Jamieson. He seems to have absorbed the ideas of spooky soundtrack composers from John Williams through Krzysztof Komeda to Max Steiner via Bernard Herrmann. When not causing audience shivers, on opening night the nervous giggling at his references were widespread.
All in all, with a fine cast, excellent style and pacing, witty and wise collaborators and a play whose writer knew exactly what he was doing, Jo Turner achieves his goal: this is a production that sets out to entertain and scare the pants off its audience. And it does!
