I visited an old friend last night: Ira Levin's Deathtrap, which is the current offering at North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shop. This is a playwright's play, i.e., a play about a play about... Director Terie Trenchard obviously had fun staging this piece.
Once-successful playwright Sidney Bruhl, Jonathan Wexler, is long on intrigue and short on new ideas. He enlists Clifford Anderson, Nick Louie, whom Bruhl recently met after one of his talks to new playwrights, to work with him. Simple. Straightforward. Well, not quite.
Levin's opus has more twists and turns than the road to Julian. There are so many murders, there is no way anybody will be alive for a curtain call.
Jeff Bushnell's set is a delight. Bruhl's collection of weapons adorns a wall of his study. It's quite a grouping: several pistols, a variety of axes and swords, and a menacing mace. Bruhl's den also includes his desk, a sitting area, several small tables, and even a fireplace.
We first meet the Bruhls, Sidney and his wife Myra, Cheryl Livingston, talking in the den. Their conversation sets up the subsequent action, or does it? You be the judge. We find that Sidney is having writer's block...for a few years. They seem to have gone through much of Myra's estate. Their conversation tends to be an intensely stagy, rather than a serious discussion. Livingston is convincing as the somewhat putupon wife, who is hiding some serious anxiety. Wexler gives Sidney a rather brutish interpretation at times a possible reaction to the frustration of writer's block.
Almost everybody has a neighbor who pokes his or her nose into their personal life. Few, fortunately, have a Helga Ten Dorp, Diane Malloy. Helga has ESP. She senses evil and death. Malloy is a delight as a totally eccentric busybody. Costumed in an array of jewelry and flowing, sparkling dresses, her entrances are a flurry of activity. As would be expected from her character, she totally dominates her scenes.
Sidney Bruhl's life would not be complete without a friendly lawyer, one Porter Milgrim, played by Brian Burke. Burke, while portraying a buddy as well as a lawyer, becomes quite lawyerly when going over details about wills, estates and the like. Every person involved in fictional and non-fictional homicide needs a man of Milgrim's abilities. Burke also has an amusing meeting with Malloy that is definitely a crowdpleaser.
Director Trenchard has crafted Ira Levin's humorous opus of mayhem and murder nicely within the confines of North Park Vaudeville's small stage, though the pacing wavers, and the whole production could be tightened up. The casting of Malloy and Burke in two minor, but pivotal roles, is excellent. The various murder scenes (ah yes, several) are very well staged.
