Ira Levin's Deathtrap is a perennial favorite of theater audiences as well as a delightful film. OnStage Playhouse is currently running the production to appreciative audiences.
It is a pleasure to sit next to a first-timer as they are bent and twisted through the duplicitous plot. Who is killing whom and, of even greater importance, why? Is it playwright Sidney Bruhl? Possibly his wife Myra? Could it be tyro playwright and Bruhl student Clifford Anderson? What role does Helga Ten Dorp play in the gruesome undertaking? Finally, could attorney Porter Milgram be capable of homicide? These are the questions that have to be answered in this convoluted plot.
Helga Ten Dorp is a character waiting for the right actress. It is a plum of a role, and director Kathryn Lee Moss chose Kimberly Garland. Helga is an over-the-top psychic, highly energetic, seer of evil, resonating to the vibrations of murder. Garland owns the role. Her Helga commands the stage every moment (all too few) that she is in front of the audience.
Another small role is that of lawyer Anderson. Tom Kilroy must have been an attorney in a prior life. He is at once dramatic and dynamic and, then, quiet and pensive. Pitting his will against Helga in the final scene delights. Rachel Carey, as Myra Bruhl, has some fine moments. Her reactions are worth even more than the words Ira Levin wrote for her. She tells it all in a look, a simple lowering of her head.
George Blum looks the part of playwright Bruhl -- a touch of facial hair, the arrogance of success, and the terror of writer's block. Bruhl has a series of emotional highs and lows. He explores plots, determining which is best for him. Yet, Blum doesn't give us those ups and downs. (Basically, they could be expressed in nothing more than varied inflection, in passionately accenting a word or a line.)
Joseph Kilbane as writing student (and more) Clifford Anderson has a similar problem. While he ranges in volume, he doesn't project the subtleties of his character. In high emotion, especially in the second act, Blum and Kilbane work well together. In the lower emotional intensity, often difficult to portray, I didn't feel their passion -- and I dearly wanted to.
The set, designed by Rosemary King is simple, yet elegant, in style and furnishings. Cornell Ellison and Marge Hale propped the latter well. Bruhl's collection of individual weapons (guns, knife, sword, mace, hangman's noose, et al) add much. Brandon I. Moss gives the set simple, effective lighting. Michael Shapiro provides proper music backing throughout.
Deathtrap is an amusing whodunit. It offers actors a platform to strut their stuff and audiences to have fun. The OnStage production is saved by those wonderful moments when Garland enters the stage in full histrionics, finding evil throughout the Bruhl study.
