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DEATHTRAP SPRINGS SURPRISES
Date : 22.02.07
Lichfield Players' most recent production was Deathtrap by Ira Leven and I guess
at times the audience felt they were caught in the Deathtrap themselves!
This is a play where you should expect the unexpected then you will not be surprised - if however you just sit there and follow the plot, disturbing as it is, it will not be long before you are not only horrendously surprised but unexpectedly horrified.You never thought someone would come back from the grave.
Nigel Lowe brings the famous playwright Sidney Bruhl to life and skilfully makes us believe in what could happen as he plans to do away with another writer and steal his play.
He teases his audience and his wife (Caroline Lowe) into wondering about his real intentions.
There are handcuffs, guns and knives hanging on the wall, all very menacing. Clifford arrives (Robin Lewitt), an interesting youthful character writer of the play. He is keen to please, the tension mounts - is he to be murdered?
We then meet Amanda Dufaye bringing all the mystery and intrigue needed to Helga Ten Dorp, a scatty psychic who senses murder and death in the air. We all feel caught in a death trap.
Yes, there was a murder, but not as effective as we thought. That was scary.
The second murder predicted by Helga was, it seemed, planned, but unless very perceptive, unexpected by the audience. Robin Lewitt made us very suspicious of Clifford. Why did he lock the desk drawer when he went out?
The success of this play was that we were all kept wondering and on edge.
The production gave great theatre, it was the contribution of all the actors, and the detailed direction which allows the intricate plot to unfold with shadows and surprises.
The creepy Helga keeps appearing with predictions of death. Everyone thinks the events could make a great play and start to write it, collaborators fall out, more deaths. Helga reveals all by her ESP to the solicitor, Porter Milgrim, played by Dale Preece. A character which seems to be in the shadows himself - it appears he might be a murderer or be murdered himself. And so the story ends, but does it - we do not know.
Another credit to the Lichfield Players performing in close proximity to their
audience in the Garrick Studio, making the involvement more effective but the
close-up acting more demanding. Win Churchill and Brain Todd kept mystery and
intrigue alive in this very tense but rewarding production. The players' next
offering, Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourn, in March will bring out
very different abilities from this talented group.