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| Andrew Beck and Lawrence Siulagi Photo by Casey Campbell Photography |
By Tina Arth
It’s that time of year again – trust Hillsboro’s Bag&Baggage
to take their Halloween offering well beyond “Boo!” with playwright Ira Levin’s
thriller Deathtrap. Levin made his
name with three iconic horror novels – Rosemary’s
Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The
Boys From Brazil before hitting the theatrical jackpot in 1978 with the
hugely successful Broadway run of Deathtrap.
Forty years later, the play still has the power to make its audience gasp and
giggle at Levin’s brilliant marriage of wit and terror, and director Scott
Palmer doesn’t miss a trick (or treat).
The show is set in the study of a down-on-his-luck
playwright, Sidney Bruhl, in Westport, Connecticut. The walls are covered with fierce looking
weapons, many representative of past successful stage thrillers on which
Bruhl’s career and fame are based. Now at the end of a long dry spell, he’s
living off his wife Myra’s largesse and has been reduced to teaching dramatic
writing to a new generation of aspiring playwrights. Bruhl is reading a
manuscript sent to him by one of his students, and is dismayed by the utter
perfection of the tyro’s script – so much so that he even jokes about killing
the student and claiming the script as his own. Myra proposes a less lethal
scheme, where Sidney can offer his services as a (completely unnecessary)
script doctor/collaborator and then convince the author, Clifford Anderson,
that they have actually co-written the play – thus letting him in for a share
of the glory, and more importantly, the gold that is sure to follow the play’s
publication. From here, the plot takes off on a series of unexpected twists and
murderous turns involving Sidney, Myra, Clifford, Porter Milgrim (Sidney’s
lawyer), and the mysterious Helga ten Dorp, a Dutch psychic who lives nearby.
Levin’s script is frequently hilarious – self aware and self-deprecating – and
there is a strong element of play-within-a-play as the plot develops and we are
shown repeatedly that all is not what it seems to be.
Lawrence Siulagi’s sly, dour, and cynical Sidney Bruhl is
the play’s centerpiece, and perhaps most completely captures Levin’s actual
voice. At every turn, Siulagi manages to convince us that his urbane exterior
houses at least one part psychopath, which keeps us on the edge of our seats.
Morgan Cox as Myra is proper, cold and rigid (physically and morally), and her
occasional overtly theatrical leaps into hysteria mirror the audience’s own
reactions at startling turns of events. Most interesting to me was watching Andrew
Beck as Clifford. In previous shows Beck has often played the knowing
sophisticate, so it was really fun to watch him initially play the part of a likeable
dumb Kopf, and even more fun watching his eyes as he gradually and subtly
telegraphed his evolution into a significantly more knowing and complex
character.
Mandana Khoshnevisan’s outré psychic, Helga, provides a
solid dose of comic relief, especially in Act II where she goes over the top,
but never out of control, and Eric St. Cyr provides a nice contrast in his
button-down, cautiously lawyerly take on Porter Milgrim.
Palmer’s production team is flawless – in particular, Jim
Ricks-White’s lighting, Tyler Buswell’s mace, sword, hatchet and handcuff
filled scenic design, and the fight choreography by Signe Larsen. I have been
promised that the unexpected opening night (fake) blood spatter was a one-time
event, so there’s no need to avoid front row seating!
Early in Act I, Bruhl avers that Clifford’s script is “So
good that even a gifted director couldn’t hurt it.” This is abundantly true in
the case of the current production, and it makes a perfect way to honor and
welcome the scariest season of the year.
Bag&Baggage’s Deathtrap
is playing at The Vault, 350 E. Main Street, Hillsboro, through October 31,
with 7:30 p.m. performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 2:00 p.m. Sunday
matinees, and special pre-Halloween shows at 7:30 on Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday October 29, 30, and 31.
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