A two-act, five character money-maker

Deathtrap, at the Noel Coward Theatre, is a play about a play. The central character is Sidney Bruhl, a once-successful but now terminally blocked playwright, who receives in the post a very promising two-act, five character thriller by a young unknown called Clifford Anderson, and in the opening scenes is sorely tempted to do away with the upstart and claim the surefire hit as his own. The play within the play is of course also called Deathtrap and the running joke of the piece is that the audience is actually watching a 'two-act, five character thriller' (which incidentally was also a huge money-maker, having a four year run on Broadway from 1978).

In essence Deathtrap, like that other long-running nerve-jangler, The Woman in Black, is a piece that depends heavily on its own theatricality. This may explain why the 1982 film version, starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, was unremarkable if still entertaining. Here, Sidney Bruhl is played by Simon Russell Beale who's cynical luvvie-ness is ideal for the role of the embittered, smart-mouthed author. Jonathan Groff from Glee also acquits himself well as the seemingly callow Clifford.

If I haven't said much about the plot, that is because to do so would be to reveal far too much; but suffice to say that despite having seen the film version at least twice and knowing what to expect I was still surprised by the story's turns, so effective were the actors and director in building up tension. Of special note is the use of lighting and sound, particularly in a scene set during a lightning storm where the viewer just knows that the next flash will reveal something awful and is pleasantly shocked when it does just that.