Killer Broadway production revived at Dundee Rep

Review: Dawn Geddes

What would you do for fame and fortune? Would you, could you kill someone if it would make your dreams come true? That’s the question Dundee Rep’s latest production, Deathtrap, asks its audience time and time again.

Ira Levin’s Broadway hit opens with a conversation between washed-up crime writer Sidney Bruhl and his wife Myra, about a killer manuscript that he’s received in the post from a former student.

If only he’d written this play, he muses, if only he could pass it off as his own, fame would be his once more and their lives could be perfect again.

So, when the young writer visits the couple that night, telling them that no one else has seen the play, Sidney sees an opportunity that he just can’t miss.

Will he be able to resist carrying out a murder so perfect, it would be fit for the stage?

Filled with twists and turns, Ira Levin’s play feels every bit as thrilling and relevant as it did when it took the US by storm 40 years ago.

Dark, clever and hugely entertaining, this rollercoaster of a production, has the audience nervously laughing one minute and jumping out of their seats the next.

The slick script, filled with wit and in-jokes, is delivered masterfully by the Dundee Ensemble’s five-strong cast.

Lewis Howden is terrific as plotting playwright Sidney Bruhl and Emily Winter shines in her part as his supportive wife. But it is graduate actor Tom England who really steals the show as Clifford Anderson, the young and gifted writer who inadvertently walks into a deadly hornet’s nest.

Deathtrap is a brilliantly tense affair, perfect for fans of the macabre. Miss it at your peril.