Deathtrap Production Pack

DEATHTRAP

PRODUCTION PACK

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

CONTENTS 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 16 23

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THE COMPANY INTRODUCTION PROGRAMME REHEARSAL PHOTOS PRODUCTION PHOTOS MEET THE DIRECTOR MEET THE CAST MEET THE DESIGNER THE MODEL BOX PRESS PREVIEWS PRESS REVIEWS CONTACT DETAILS

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20 FEB - 10 MAR 2018

DEATHTRAP

By Ira Levin Directed by Johnny McKnight CAST Sidney Bruhl

Lewis Howden

Myra Bruhl

Emily Winter

Clifford Anderson

Thomas England

Helga ten Dorp

Irene Macdougall

Porter Milgrim

Ewan Donald

CREATIVE TEAM Writer

Ira Levin

Director

Johnny McKnight

Designer

Kenny Miller

Lighting Designer

Chris Davey

Composer

Ross Brown

Fight Director

EmmaClaire Brightlyn

Voice Coach

Jean Sangster

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INTRODUCTION

It was Dundee Rep’s Artistic Director, Andrew Panton, who drew my attention to Deathtrap. He said I should read it, that there was something in it that I’d like. He was right. Not only is it an exceptional piece of writing, but it’s genre-defying – a delicious cocktail of the thrillers that have come before it – part Agatha Christie, part Hitchcock, part Film Noir – only it’s put in a blender and served up with ice-cold humour. AND there’s a psychic in it too! How could I possibly resist...

The play was first presented in 1978 but is just as relevant today as it was then. The black heart at its very centre asks – would you kill for the chance to be rich and famous? Turn on the TV, the endless parade of reality TV stars humiliating themselves in the name of entertainment, flick open a magazine and see how easily celebrities sell their lives in order to stay relevant and noticed. The lengths we are willing to go to achieve success and notoriety hasn’t quietened since the play opened 40 years ago, if anything its hunger is even more voracious, making Deathtrap perfect for a current revival.

I’ve watched and admired the work at the Rep for years, so to get the opportunity to work with such a talented, committed and brilliant cast and crew for the first time was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. And the fact I loved the script so much? That was just a bonus.

Johnny McKnight Director

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PROGRAMME

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REHEARSAL PHOTOS

Photos: Sean Millar

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PRODUCTION PHOTOS

Photos: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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MEET THE DIRECTOR

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT I am Johnny McKnight and I am the director of Deathtrap. It’s quite hard to explain Deathtrap as a show. On its first level it’s a murder-mystery but it’s like a modern murder-mystery, there’s a kind of element of your Agatha Christie style, but it’s aware of all the stuff that’s went before it, it’s aware that it comes on the back of Hitchcock, it’s a murder-mystery, it’s a comedy, it’s a thriller, it’s a who-did-it and a why-done-it. Just even reading it, it’s a proper page-turner, you’ve no idea what’s coming next.

Well this is my first time at Dundee so I am the new boy, I think me and Lizzie the Lighting Designer we’re the only two newbies and Tom, the actor actually, so there’s three of us that are new to Dundee so it’s really exciting, it’s lovely to work in a new theatre.

I’ve been to see so many productions up here through the years so it’s brilliant to come in here and actually get to have a go and terrifying of course, it’s always terrifying coming to start at a new place. Rehearsals, pretty much the way I would approach it is the way I do all rehearsals and that is you collaborate in the room. I’m a great believer in, you know, I came to directing through being a performer so I’m a great believer in your performers and your actors should all feel like they are collaborating and we’re all building the play together along with your designer, and your composer and your lighting designer and everybody so rehearsals have been... it’s quite a tricky play. There’s a lot of work that’s needing done discussing actually what plot beats you need to set up for an audience and what each character is... you know it’s a bit of a maze to go through in rehearsals but I’d like to think we’re all on that journey together and we’re all finding it and discovering it together.

I hope that audiences are thrilled, surprised, shocked, scared would be good, and also that they find the humour in it, there’s a lot of really good black humour through it, and most of all entertained.

A night at the theatre should be entertaining. It should make you forget we’re in -2 degrees or it’s raining outside or the visa bills have come through after Christmas. It should be - and it will be - a good night out at the theatre that will make the day seem a bit brighter and bit more pazazzy.

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MEET THE CAST

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Emily Winter: My name is Emily Winter and I’m playing the character of Myra Bruhl who is the wife of Sidney Bruhl, famous author of ‘The Murder Game’. What’s happened is when she married Sidney 11 years ago, he was the prominent playwright and I think what’s happened over the years is he’s never really, he’s written plays but they just haven’t had the same success that ‘The Murder Game’ had and so I think for both of them that’s been quite hard.

Lewis Howden: I’m Lewis Howden and I’m playing Sidney Bruhl. Sidney and his wife live in a big house in the country, he’s not written a successful play for a long time, they’re both getting a bit concerned but he also teaches at a University and in one of these seminars he meets a young writer who sends him a script and when he reads the script he realises it’s a huge hit.

Irene Macdougall: My name is Irene Macdougall and I am a member of Dundee Rep Ensemble.

I’m playing Helga ten Dorp, she’s Dutch and she is a psychic. It’s a thriller written by Ira Levin who wrote things like Rosemary’s Baby, Boys From Brazil, I mean he is the most fantastic writer.

Deathtrap is a kind of classic thriller in a way.

Tom England: I’m Tom England and I’m playing Clifford Anderson. Clifford is someone with a huge drive for success, he’s very ambitious and he’s kind of like a ball of energy. He’s very surprising, he always surprises you, you don’t really fully know him until the end of the play.

Ewan Donald: My name is Ewan Donald I play a character called Porter Milgrim. He is a lawyer, a family man and a good guy. There’s a lot of subtext going on which is always fun to play with.

LH: The script’s really, really tight, really excitingly tight and there’s loads of words, and it’s witty.

We’ve been talking about it like an old Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn film, the characters play off each other really quickly and it’s how it unravels is what makes this play special because it keeps surprising you.

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IM: I think the interesting thing about this one is because it plays with the genre of thriller, as well as being a thriller, which is very clever, the writing’s very different, the dialogue is very different.

You get surprised all the time, I mean you never know what’s coming up next. It is a real surprise and I think that’s what I find quite interesting about it. If you don’t know the story then it’s going to shock you I think.

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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MEET THE DESIGNER I’m Kenny Miller and I’m the set and costume designer for Deathtrap.

Every process is the same to start with - you read the script, you look at all the difficulties involved in the script, you list all the things, like if you need fire, what time of year it is, what each act is split in to; whether it’s morning, evening or afternoon. So you make lists and lists of all the things that are needed in terms of doors stage left or doors stage right or whatever. Usually when those lists are done I completely ignore them but that’s just so that I can read the script with what the author intended and then I can kind of forget about it and then come up with my own device in my head of producing the emotion of the play. Then I go away and I produce a 1:25 scale model, usually in white card to start with, to show the director what the architecture of the room is, for example. Then he or she comments on that, and then I do a finished model which is brought to the workshop.

This is a really good one because the central character is a man who has invented his own kind of man cave and men love having a room where they just have all their own things, you know their personal things, whether they suddenly have a record player in there and they play all their vinyl from years ago and things like that. And that’s kind of what he’s done, it’s a colonial house and he’s built an extension on to the house which is solely used as a workplace for him and he has surrounded himself by things which he loves from the plays that he has written, theatrical things that have been used on stage - bits of props, weaponry, bits of costume, books - and he just kind of goes in there and spends time in this space which he loves.

It has been two years I think now since I was last here and it’s great, the people are still fantastic.

Photo: Sean Millar

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THE MODEL BOX

Photos: Sean Millar

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PRESS PREVIEWS The National 4 Feb 2018 Johnny McKnight

IN THEIR OWN WORDS ... WRITER AND DIRECTOR JOHNNY MCKNIGHT AWARD-WINNING writer and director Johnny McKnight has directed a number of leading companies including Scottish Opera, Tron Theatre, Macrobert, Perth Theatre. This month he makes his directorial debut at Dundee Rep with a production of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, the longest running thriller on Broadway.

AS a kid I was fascinated by mysteries. It started with the Famous Five and Secret Seven and then progressed into Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys and, ultimately, on to devouring most Agatha Christie novels before the age of 14.

The material got darker as I got older – it moved from thriller to horror (Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th) and I became fascinated with “the other side”.

I started going to spiritualist churches, hoping to get a message from the dead. I did, from my auntie’s springer spaniel. No joke, he was seemingly very happy.

Aged 20, I thought I’d found the ultimate thriller – the movie Scream. It was funny, it was thrilling, it was a mystery and, most of all, it knew its own genre, nodding and winking throughout the movie at itself. It riffed off our expectations and played with its audience. I loved that. And that was a first. Or so I thought.

Andrew Panton, the artistic director of Dundee Rep, drew my attention to Deathtrap, saying he felt there was something in it that I’d like.

He couldn’t have been more right. It has all the same elements as Scream except – and here’s the thing – it was written way before that post-modern thriller. Almost 30 years before it. It takes all those mysteries I loved growing up, all those Hitchcock movies, those arch and villainous film noirs, puts them in a blender, and serves it up with ice-cold humour. And there’s a psychic in it too! How could I possibly resist?

I’ve worked consistently since graduating nearly 18 years ago (which makes me 28, I was a child prodigy!). I’ve made work for, or toured to, or performed in, pretty much every theatre in Scotland, except one – Dundee Rep. I’ve watched countless shows there, but never worked or taken work to this venue. It’s always been that boy that you fancied at the other side of the hall at the school disco, but you didn’t have the courage to ask to dance.

There’s a series of firsts working on this show: first time I’ve worked with any of the brilliant actors in the production; first time I’ve ever worked with a fight director; with Lizzie Powell (renowned lighting designer); first time I’ve had the opportunity to work on a murder mystery – to draw upon all those things that I was absorbing growing up. But, most importantly, it’s my first time at Dundee, my first dance, which is exciting, and terrifying, and hilarious and thrilling – handy, because that’s exactly everything Deathtrap is.

Feb 22 to Mar 10, previews on Feb 20 and 21, Dundee Rep, various times, £12 to £25, concs available. Tel: 01382 223530. www.dundeerep.co.uk

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The Courier 16 Feb 2018 Dawn Geddes

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The Herald 21 Feb 2018 Neil Cooper

Deathtrap, the longest running comedy-thriller on Broadway, is back on stage in Scotland Neil Cooper Theatre critic

JOHNNY McKnight wasn’t aware of Deathtrap when he was asked to direct it at Dundee Rep. Given the writer, director and co-founder of Random Accomplice Theatre Company’s pop cultural roots, this was a surprise to him as much as anyone else.

“I’d never heard of it,” he says of American writer Ira Levin’s Tony-nominated play, which still holds the record as the longest running comedy-thriller on Broadway. Four years later it was adapted for a film starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve and directed by Sidney Lumet.

“One of my favourite films is Charade, which is both a comedy and a thriller, and that’s what I liked about Deathtrap. There’s loads of twists and turns, there’s a touch of humour, and it’s loaded with really sharp dialogue.

“It also felt really modern. I was surprised it was from the late 70s, because it looks more like a post-modern take on Dial M for Murder or something like that. It feels as well that somebody who knows that genre really well and gave it a wee twist so it still felt fresh as well as knowing.”

Deathtrap is a play within a play that charts the travails of a successful playwright suffering from writers’ block. Having read one of his students’ plays, the writer suggests to his wife that he could murder his protégé and claim his work as his own. What happens next is a series of double bluffs that keeps the audience on its toes as thrill is piled upon thrill to keep the audience guessing right to its darkly comic end.

Beyond its initial Broadway run and the subsequent film, Levin’s play has become something of a staple of the commercial touring circuit. In 2002, a production featured David Soul and Susan Penhaligon in the lead roles, while in 2017 Paul Bradley and ex EastEnder Jessie Wallace toured in the play.

While many of his works ended up as films, Ira Levin was best known as a novelist, with Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil all ending up on the big screen, as well as later novels such as Sliver. It was in his plays, however, where his forensic understanding of genre seemed to have most fun, often lampooning some of the vanities of his own industry.

Levin’s 1960 play, Critic’s Choice, is a comedy that focuses on a theatre critic whose wife writes a terrible Broadway play which the critic wrestles over whether to review it honestly or not. The play was later made into a film starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. Another play, Footsteps, features a best-selling novelist who is visited by an obsessive fan who knows everything about her. It too was made into a film, albeit for TV only, starring Candice Bergen.

“The big thing that Ira Levin was sending up in Deathtrap was the pretence of people wanting to be rich and famous without doing anything,” says McKnight. “It’s like that even more now with reality TV, where people would rather be known for just being famous rather than for their craft and being good at what they do. Ira Levin takes all that, and understands the genre perfectly, but writes it with a dark humour that runs through it like a stick of rock. I know this will sound stupid, but it’s like panto.

You respect what’s gone before in the genre, and then you try and give it a fresh twist. In that way I felt I understood what he was trying to get at with the play.”

McKnight is diplomatically wary of the film version. “It’s very 80s,” he says. “It’s not like the play. Ira Levin wasn’t involved in the film, so the dialogue’s not as good, and it feels very schlocky. I watched it, and I thought, well, I can forget about it now.”

The evergreen appeal of thrillers, murder mysteries and other brands of pulp fiction designed to keep you guessing, be it on

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page, stage or screen, is something Levin clearly understood in Deathtrap. The recent wave of Agatha Christie revivals and similarly inclined works by a new wave of writers tap in to a similar sensibility. The likes of Dial M for Murder, originally written

by Frederick Knott for television before making it to the stage and made famous by Alfred Hitchcock’s film do likewise. While many of these have become touring favourites in a similar way to Deathtrap, many have been reassessed beyond their surface hamminess.

McKnight is full of praise for writer Sarah Phelps’ dark re-workings of Agatha Christie in TV productions of And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and the forthcoming three-part adaptation of Ordeal by Innocence.

“She has a proper feel for them,” says McKnight. “They can sometimes be played as camp, but she really gets into the body of the stories.”

Beyond Deathtrap’s subversion of form, there are also hints of a gay under-current running throughout.

“It’s the whole point of Act Two,” says McKnight. “It’s not subtext. That’s the reality of what’s going on, and you can’t take it out, because that would remove any emotional stake, and it’s there for a reason. Compared to the stuff that’s seen on a stage these days, it couldn’t be more subtle.”

However much Deathtrap upends its roots, the appeal of thrillers is a no-brainer.

“I think everyone’s fascinated with thrillers because we all wonder what it will take to kill someone,” he says. “It’s the same reason why some people become fascinated with serial killers. It’s always interesting to find out how bad a person can be. That’s partly why we go to the theatre to watch plays like Deathtrap, to watch these things happen onstage, and then feel glad because we’re sane.

“It’s like when you have a row with someone, and when you tell someone about it, the phrase ‘I could’ve killed them’ is never far away. Everybody’s had that feeling, but most of us never do anything about it, whereas in thrillers and murder mysteries, you can be taken into the darkest corners of other people’s minds.

“Doing a show like Deathtrap in February as well feels right. Christmas has long gone, and your Visa bills have come in, so no wonder you’re having dark thoughts.”

McKnight isn’t over-intellectualising the play, however, and won’t be imposing any kind of ill-fitting concept on a work that’s perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet.

“It does what it’s designed to do,” he says, “which is to bring out an audience who know that genre, and think they know the formula, but which then plays with that. I think Deathtrap has a sense of playfulness which a lot of things from that genre probably don’t. Dial M and all that can be seen as being quite dusty, and they feel like they’re stuck among a certain class of people who are all really uptight. Deathtrap is the reverse of that. You think you know what you’re going to see, but it’s not about uptight people, and the worst thing you can do with a play like this is to try and camp it up.”

McKnight checks himself for a second.

“Listen to me,” he says. “When have you ever heard me talking about trying not to be camp?”

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PRESS REVIEWS The Herald 23 Feb 2018 Neil Cooper

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IF THERE was any justice, what happens in play-writing class should stay in play-writing class in Ira Levin’s 1970s comedy thriller, revived here by Dundee Rep Ensemble in Johnny McKnight’s forensically dissected production. There’s no chance of that, alas, in veteran pulp thriller hack Sidney Bruhl and his young charge Clifford Anderson’s world. Sidney has lost his mojo following a series of flops, but when he reads a play called Deathtrap by wannabe genius Clifford, he smells a hit. With wife and apparent accomplice Myra in tow, Sidney concocts a half-jokey plot to kill the kid and pass off his play as his own.

What follows as Levin’s yarn twists and turns its way towards a not entirely inevitable denouement is so darn knowing it practically winks at an audience who lap up this sort of thing. Like an extended episode of Inside No 9 as directed by Ryan Murphy, Levin’s post-modern high-jinks are plotted like a well-oiled if somewhat eccentric machine programmed to surprise the audience and raise the stakes as high as you like.

With type-writers to the fore, Kenny Miller’s set is a grandiloquent 3D masterpiece of retro-vintage chic that becomes the suitably dramatic backdrop for the scene of a crime that’s never over-done by McKnight. As Sidney, Lewis Howden is an avuncular but sly old fox, with Emily Winter’s Myra egging him on like a Stepford Lady Macbeth. Thomas England’s preppy Clifford may be too smart for his own good, but it’s left to Ewan Donald’s oily lawyer to count the cost. The only person in the room who can really see what’s coming next is Swedish psychic next door Helga ten Dorp, here given an eye-popping cameo by a deadpan Irene Macdougall in an obsessive piece of psychotic largesse.

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The Wee Review 23 Feb 2018 Emily Christie

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Deathtrap opens to an intimidating yet domestic set featuring battle axes, crossbows and pistols mounted on the walls. From this moment on an unwavering atmosphere of both humour and terror is sustained, truly breathing new life into the classic dark comedy thriller.

Lewis Howden captures the sinister spirit of the darkly humorous playwright Sydney Bruhl from the opening moments. However, his American drawl is shaky and questionable to begin with and he lacks some of the energy Emily Winter, playing Sidney’s wife Myra, displays from the outset. This initial uneasiness is soon forgotten as the two expertly weave through dialogue that is at once witty and tense, creating a convincing marital relationship tinged with the threat of violence.

The entire cast offer well-developed, interesting and complex performances, navigating the myriad of twists and turns expertly while managing to keep the constantly developing emotions fresh and believable. Howden and Tom England, playing the young, ambitious playwright Clifford Anderson are particularly strong and build tension to dizzying climaxes at multiple points throughout the show. This occurs most notably during the second act where their skilful back and forth and rapport perfectly evokes the genre-bending themes of the play and constantly raises the question of who is the victim and who is the villain. Irene MacDougall is especially impressive in the role of Helga Den Topp, delivering every line with perfect tone and timing, drawing huge laughs from the audience.

The single set of Bruhl’s study, decked out in matte grey with striking reds never feels restrictive or monotonous, with the multitude of props and the use of quick paced music and dramatic blue and red lighting perfectly reflecting the action on stage and the turbulent emotions of the characters. The violence in the play is also dealt with incredibly well, providing just enough blood to elicit shock without veering into uncomfortable gore. There is a technical error near the end of the first act where music is played too early and gives away the surprise return of a character. This shakes the effectiveness of the important moment. However, the actors rise to the occasion and work through this issue.

Deathtrap is an incredibly well structured, acted and staged play that constantly raises questions and keeps the momentum of fear and humour rolling over the entire run time.

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The Scotsman 24 Feb 2018 Joyce McMillan

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Theatre review: Deathtrap Published: 07:00 Saturday 24 February 2018

Dundee Rep ****

IMAGINE a world in which there are absolutely no nice people – no tenderness, no kindness, no mercy, no real morality; then combine it with all the twists and tropes of a traditional murder mystery, and add a layer of fiendish meta-theatrical jokery by making the central character a playwright.

That’s the world conjured up in Ira Levin’s brilliant 1978 thriller, Deathtrap; and although it would be hell to live in, it’s a hugely entertaining place to spend a couple of hours, particularly in a production as visually spectacular, elegant and witty as this latest version at Dundee Rep, designed by arch-stylist Kenny Miller, vividly lit by Lizzie Powell, and directed by comedy-and-panto genius Johnny McKnight. As the play opens, ageing playwright Sidney Bruhl is sitting at his library desk in rural Connecticut, surrounded by posters for his own once-successful plays, and brooding over the script of a brilliant new thriller he has just received from one of his creative writing students.

Cue an immensely convoluted Russian doll of a plot in which Bruhl invites the young man up to Westport for a script session, with – his wife Myra fears – nefarious motives, highlighted by the collection of old murder weapons waiting in frames on the library walls; it’s typical of the sheer wit of the clean-lines modernist set – without a trace of chintz or brown leather – that the highlighting is literal, with the exhibits glowing in bloody pink against a backdrop of grey bookshelves. And there follows a delicious roller-coaster ride of plot and counter-plot, well sustained by Lewis Howden as Sidney, Emily Winter as Myra, and Thomas England as the young playwright Clifford, with Irene Macdougall in fine form as local clairvoyant Helga ten Dorp, an enjoyable if stereotyped comic turn.

The play’s weakness lies in the emotional aridity of its vision, which allows for no character development.

Two hours is probably enough, when we can be certain that everything a character says will soon turn out to be a manipulative lie; and it’s not surprising that when the play wanders into what was still, in 1978, the socially taboo realm of gay romance, it becomes uneasy and embarrassing. Yet the style, pace, and classic-thriller melodrama of Johnny McKnight’s production is as amusing as it is satisfying; and Levin’s multi-layered ingenuity so breathtaking that it quite deliberately leaves us wondering whether he himself ever thought of making away with a few young playwriting rivals – but not, of course, before pocketing their brilliant debut plays, and claiming them as his own.

JOYCE MCMILLAN Until 10 March

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The Times 24 Feb 2018 Allan Radcliffe

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According to the principle of Chekhov’s gun, if we see a firearm on stage in act one, it must be used by the play’s end. Ira Levin’s thriller Deathtrap certainly sticks faithfully to the Russian’s view that everything we see on stage must have some relevance to the action.

As the props on display include several pistols as well as daggers, swords, a mace and a crossbow, the audience spends much of the play bracing itself for the inevitable bloodbath. Levin’s work, which debuted in 1978, belongs to a tradition of popular stage thrillers that includes John Willard’s The Cat and the Canary and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Like Christie’s whodunit, Deathtrap is notable for its longevity, holding the record as the longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway. Such popularity is easy to grasp: there is no better sound in the theatre than the collective gasp at a shocking twist or character volte-face.

Indeed the plot features so many twists and turns that it is almost impossible to give a précis without giving away some of its secrets. The protagonist is Sidney Bruhl (played in Dundee Rep’s revival by Lewis Howden), a one-time successful writer of stage thrillers, now fallen on less fruitful times. As the play opens Sidney has been enviously reading the script for a new play, sent to him by an admirer, Clifford Anderson (Tom England).

Sidney impulsively invites young Clifford down to his house, apparently to offer advice on improving the manuscript, though his wife, Myra (Emily Winter), is uneasy. “Would you actually kill someone to have a successful play?” she asks. “Don’t be foolish, darling,” replies Sidney. “Of course I would.”

Levin’s postmodern play-within-a-play premise allows the writer much scope to have fun with the genre, toying with the audience’s expectations and delivering shocks of the most enjoyable variety. There are nods in the script to everything from Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder to the “murderous gays” of Patrick Hamilton’s Rope. Johnny McKnight, the director, meanwhile, throws everything in the playbook at this production, including faces at windows, flickering lights and flashes of lightning, while Ross Brown’s insistent score recalls John Carpenter’s spine-tingling music for his horror films.

As one would expect of the author of the successful thrillers Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, the plot is king here, with every other element at its service, including character plausibility. Watching McKnight’s lovingly crafted production is as enjoyable as a ride on a ghost train and ultimately just as disposable.

Having learned the many twists contained in Deathtrap, few are likely to feel the need for repeat viewings.

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The Courier 24 Feb 2018 Dawn Geddes

Killer Broadway production revived at Dundee Rep What would you do for fame and fortune? Would you, could you kill someone if it would make your dreams come true? That’s the question Dundee Rep’s latest production, Deathtrap, asks its audience time and time again.

Ira Levin’s Broadway hit opens with a conversation between washed-up crime writer Sidney Bruhl and his wife Myra, about a killer manuscript that he’s received in the post from a former student.

If only he’d written this play, he muses, if only he could pass it off as his own, fame would be his once more and their lives could be perfect again.

So, when the young writer visits the couple that night, telling them that no one else has seen the play, Sidney sees an opportunity that he just can’t miss.

Will he be able to resist carrying out a murder so perfect, it would be fit for the stage? Filled with twists and turns, Ira Levin’s play feels every bit as thrilling and relevant as it did when it took the US by storm 40 years ago.

Dark, clever and hugely entertaining, this rollercoaster of a production, has the audience nervously laughing one minute and jumping out of their seats the next.

The slick script, filled with wit and in-jokes, is delivered masterfully by the Dundee Ensemble’s five-strong cast.

Lewis Howden is terrific as plotting playwright Sidney Bruhl and Emily Winter shines in her part as his supportive wife. But it is graduate actor Tom England who really steals the show as Clifford Anderson, the young and gifted writer who inadvertently walks into a deadly hornet’s nest.

Deathtrap is a brilliantly tense affair, perfect for fans of the macabre. Miss it at your peril.

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The List 26 Feb 2018 Lorna Irvine

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Johnny McKnight’s knotty, naughty take on the 1978 Ira Levin play Tickling thriller tropes into submission, Johnny McKnight proves that he’s not just a purveyor of panto for the Christmas season.

This seems from the outset like a classic American farce,with Lewis Howden’s avuncular playwright Sidney Bruhl cracking wise as the veneer of his marriage cracks. But as Kenny Miller’s gloriously pulpy, macabre set suggests, nothing is simply black and white. There are slashes of red too, and the weapons in his study aren’t necessarily just displayed for decorative purposes. Bruhl hasn’t had a hit play for a while, and increasingly mercenary tactics are required.

Hard to pigeonhole and enormously good fun, McKnight picks apart the cadavers of the creative process, and the tremendous cast -in particular Tom England as hotshot new playwright Clifford Anderson and a fabulous Irene MacDougall as eccentric psychic Helga Ten Dorp-ensure the kitsch never outweighs the suspense. Emily Winter is the (somewhat damaged) moral compass, eliciting shocks throughout as her neurotic but loving wife Myra Bruhl becomes a pawn in Sidney’s desperate bid for success.

It’s furious, funny and juicy, as the nature of fame becomes a bloody battle where nobody wins. The future is but a blank page,waiting to be filled. After forty years, Levin’s brilliant satirical words still sting like paper cuts.

Deathtrap, Dundee Rep Theatre, Tues 20 Feb-Sat 10 Mar.

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The Stage 26 Feb 2018 Thom Dibdin

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Deathtrap review at Dundee Rep Theatre – ‘an entertaining revival’

Ira Levin’s tightly plotted thriller, first staged in 1978, is delivered with maximum impact in Johnny McKnight’s entertaining revival.

The production boasts a trio of bright and intelligent performances. Lewis Howden is perfectly cast as Sidney Bruhl, a once-successful playwright with writer’s block whose jealousy goes into overdrive when his writing student, Clifford, sends him a sure-fire hit script for his appraisal.

Howden’s shambling, avuncular performance never ceases to convince, even when he suggests that murder might be on the cards if he invites Clifford round to help him work on his play.

Emily Winter bustles around effectively as his wife, Myra, first laughing along with Sidney’, then becoming increasingly shocked and horrified as his murderous plan becomes a reality. Tom England is suitably gauche as the young would-be playwright who doesn’t know what is coming.

The action plays out on Kenny Miller’s bright, almost but not-quite garish set, and lighting and sound are used to help spring the thrills. The metatheatrical nature of the play – Clifford’s script is also called Deathtrap – is also well handled. But it’s the naturalism and chemistry in the relationship between the two men that makes the strongest impression.

In contrast, Irene Macdougall, as psychic neighbour Helga ten Dorp, and Ewan Donald as attorney Porter Milgrim, are far more broadly comic. Nor does it help that a final scene, played for laughs, struggles to achieve the impact of anything that has gone before.

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For further information about our Education projects and resources, please contact Heather Cassidy (Education and Pathways Associate) on 01382 342660 or email hcassidy@dundeereptheatre.co.uk

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