Deathtrap

With All the Trappings

Deathtrap

by Ira Levin

Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 15^th February

Review by Louis Mazzini

Presented by Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre, Steve Taylor’s production of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap delivers on all fronts. 

Daniel Wain plays Sidney Bruhl, a once celebrated playwright who hasn’t had a hit in eighteen years.  In the opening scene, Sidney has just finished looking over his post.  It includes a playscript sent to him by Clifford Anderson, “one of the twerps” who had attended one of Sidney’s seminars the previous summer.  Clifford is played by Jacob Taylor (the director’s son) and, dishearteningly for Sidney, Clifford’s script – ‘Deathtrap’ – is surprisingly good. 

As Sidney explains to his wife Myra, it is “a thriller in two acts.  One set.  Five characters.  A juicy murder in Act One, unexpected developments in Act Two.  Sound construction, good dialogue, laughs in the right places.  Highly commercial… It can’t miss.  A gifted director couldn’t even hurt it”.   If only Sidney had written it.  If only… and so by a third of the way through Act One everyone in the auditorium at Hampton Hill is thinking that they know where Deathtrap is going … so that when what happens is exactly what everyone expects no one is too surprised, but as for what happens after that … well, this is a spoiler-free review and that is all that can be said about the plot of Deathtrap. 

Daniel Wain is the larger-than-life Sidney to a T, savouring every bitter bon mot that drops from the playwright’s mouth, and spiderlike as he lures the hapless Clifford into his web under the nose of his frowning wife, Laura Eagland essaying a superb American accent.  As the gauche young student, Jacob Taylor turns in an excellent performance, varying the voltage with great precision as Sidney’s plot plays out.  And just as Clifford’s ‘Deathtrap’ has five characters so too does Deathtrap, with the cast rounded off by Dominic Lloyd as Sidney’s lawyer, Porter Milgrim, and a sublimely funny Lara Parker as the Bruhls’ alarmingly psychic neighbour Helga Von Dorf.

As with all of the very best thrillers – Sleuth, Dial M for Murder and Witness for the Prosecution – Levin’s script needs to be taken seriously and director Steve Taylor – assisted by Karen Sheards – concocts a near perfect blend of thrills and laughs.  Director and cast are well served by Wesley Henderson Roe’s set of the Bruhls’ weapon-strewn house in Connecticut, and also by the technical team.  A word too for the role of Intimacy Coordination, provided here by Jane Marcus: still under-valued by some, this is a vitally important element of modern theatre. 

While Ira Levin completed Deathtrap in 1977, it had been five years since he had had the original idea, that of a playwright receiving a manuscript in the mail.  “It started with that.  I didn’t know who it was from, or whether he was using it to deceive his wife, or she him.  I played with it for several years”.  He felt it was his best play.  And it is.  Indeed, Deathtrap has a good case for being the best stage thriller of them all.

Highly recommended.

Louis Mazzini, February 2025

Photography by Steve Sitton