Review: DEATHTRAP at Spotlighters Is a Self-Referential, Funny, and Sometimes Scary Delight

Hall of Mirrors. Self-referential. Meta. All of these terms might be used to supplement the general category of Thriller into which Deathtrap, Ira Levin’s 1978 Broadway hit currently being resurrected at Spotlighters, fits. Yes, the play is (as a thriller should be) about lethal relationships and scary surprises. But it is equally about a play of the same name about lethal relationships and scary surprises, a play that features all of the same characters (albeit with different names). Actually the characters appear to be generating more than one such play, and in various ways the characters cause these plays to compete. The characters are continually watching themselves and describing their own actions as if they were plotting a play, which we soon come to recognize is more or less what they’re doing. In a very real sense, the characters are (in this respect, at least) like those in Luigi Piranello’s 1921/1922 classic, Six Characters in Search of an Author, performing the role of playwright in their own individual and collective dramas.

Now, this is not the normal way with thrillers. Ordinarily thrillers are not about themselves, and, however much realities are concealed at the beginning, by the end we think we in the audience know “what happened.” I do believe there is an official retrospective “what happened” here as well, but it may be less than definitive, since the last scene shows two characters piecing together what had happened, but each of them can only be regarded as an unreliable narrator. Fortunately, they are recreating events the audience has already witnessed. Unfortunately, in the miasma of competing plots and play scripts, it becomes hard to keep track, even enough to decide whether the characters reconstructing what happened “got it right.”

But the reality is that we, along with the audiences who propelled this property to 1,793 Broadway performances, may be beyond following the thread of “what happened.” Critic Edmund Wilson famously dismissed most crime fiction with the phrase: “Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?” Whether one considers Wilson right or wrong in general, that phrase need not always be used in a dismissive way, and I wouldn’t use it that way here; we don’t care because we’ve been thoroughly amused, whether or not we’ve followed the thread of the plot to its conclusion.

We don’t care because we can appreciate the elegance of the fundamental conception of this play: fiction enmeshed with metafiction, all delivered with comic wit and definite thrills and chills and scares.

I can illustrate this with a much-edited synopsis. The protagonist, playwright Sidney Bruhl (urbanely portrayed by Darren McDonnell) has had a series of hits, each a thriller of its own, and each commemorated on his study wall by a lobby card and a weapon used in that show. That series of hits has stopped coming, however, and Sidney is hurting for a new one. But he announces to his wife Myra (Aparna Sri) that he has just heard from a student named Clifford Anderson (gamely performed on-script the night of the performance I saw by understudy J. Purnell Hargrove), who has sent him a very promising script for a play called Deathtrap. Clifford, we are told, will be arriving with what may be the only other copy of the script. It becomes apparent (apparently) that Sidney is at least toying with the notion of killing Clifford so that Sidney can pass Clifford’s script off as his own, a scheme that the absence of any remaining documentation connecting Clifford with the script would surely facilitate. Sure enough, Clifford turns up, and obligingly allows Sidney to handcuff him. And then – well, I can’t tell you what happens then, in observance of the critic’s obligation not to issue spoilers. Suffice it to say that whatever happens next may not be what it seems. Observing, dismayed, but at least partially complicit in whatever happens next is Myra. Not as dismayed as she will be, however, by whatever happens subsequently to whatever happens next.

It very quickly becomes apparent that most if not all of the weapons mounted on the wall are likely to be used in one lethal way or another, in keeping with Chekhov’s dictum that “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.” I’m not sure Chekhov ever considered what follows from putting not only a pistol on the wall (actually two of them), but an axe and a crossbow and a knife, etc. If Chekhov’s dictum is applied faithfully to such an oversized arsenal, the results are likely to prove repetitious, funny, and scary all at the same time. They did here.

Levin also amped up the comedy with a character played almost strictly for laughs, a psychic named Helga ten Dorp, portrayed here with observable relish by Melissa Bannister. I’m not sure how much of a stock character she is, as I can only call to mind one other somewhat similar character, Madame Arcati from Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy Blithe Spirit, which in 1964 had been succeeded on Broadway by the musical made of it, High Spirits, in which Arcati, then portrayed by the inimitable Beatrice Lillie, mingled total seriousness about her calling as a medium with a zany personality. Deathtrap being a darker shade of comedy, Helga’s visions are of more brooding and terrifying sort, but they are certainly balanced by a similarly zany trait, a tenuous command of English as a second language – and by a less-than-perfect view even in her clairvoyance. For instance, Helga is able to sense pain in the room, but also quite capable of misidentifying whose pain it is. (As to Helga’s linguistic wobbliness, it would seem that Dialect Coach Kelly Rardon deserves a tip of the hat. And as long as I’m tipping hats, here’s kudos to Scenic Designer Justin Nepomuceno, for fashioning the always-challenging Spotlighters space into a study matter-of-factly festooned with death-dealing toys.)

It's a little less clear to me where Levin was hoping to go with the final character, a somewhat dubious lawyer named Porter Milgrim (Carlo Olivi), but it seems clear that Milgrim was a true stereotype, the ethically-challenged lawyer. Perhaps it’s my own status as a proud retiree of the bar, but (no knock on Mr. Olivi) I just didn’t find the role either convincing or well-thought-through. By the time Milgrim becomes significant in the plot, however, the play is almost over. So no harm, no foul. (That unnecessary last scene where he becomes important was actually eliminated from the 1982 movie made of this play, and properly so.)

The show has aged pretty well, too. Its references to popular culture seem not to have been changed, and yet to be contemporaneous enough not to leave a contemporary theatergoer struggling to understand. There are strong hints of a homosexual relationship between two of the characters, and the restraint around making this more explicit does come across as somewhat quaint now. And a lot of the stuff that might come across as over the top, like for instance the racket and darkness from ominous weather outside to ramp up the tension while dastardly deeds are done indoors, though conventional then and now, doesn’t go out of style.

And that, I think, about exhausts what a critic can ethically say about the show. I should also, in the spirit of full disclosure, note that Spotlighters staged a play of mine last year, which I certainly appreciate. But take it from me anyway: this show is unfailingly entertaining, without a serious bone in its body – and well-performed. And at times (and this may be one of them) that is just what a theatergoer may crave.

Deathtrap, by  Ira Levin, directed by Stephen Foreman, presented by Spotlighters Theatre through December 8, at 817 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore,  MD  21202. Tickets $24, with group rates available, at https://www.spotlighters.org/ . Threatened and actual violence and bloodshed, gunshot sound.

Photo Credit: Machpe Photography

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