Deathtrap
Directed by John Monnett
October 14- October 29, 2005
Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m.
One matinee, Sunday, October 23 at 2:00 p.m.

Deathtrap has been cast. Click here for a Cast List.

About the Play

A successful playwright is suffering an artistic and emotional crisis – having written the most successful thriller in Broadway history, his last four plays have been flops. Out of the blue, he receives a draft of a play from an aspiring young playwright who attended one of his seminars. Impressed and envious of its potential, he offhandedly suggests that this would be an ideal motive for murder, so he invites the young man to his home. Is he desperate enough for an artistic comeback that he would kill his student and take credit for the script? Deathtrap reveals the answer, giving literal meaning to the phrase “publish or perish”.

Alternating intrigue with humor, Deathtrap is a classic suspense thriller, stunning audiences with multiple unexpected plot twists, while simultaneously poking fun at its own genre. Featuring a celebrated playwright, his supportive wife, an enthusiastic student, a quirky psychic and a suspicious attorney, this play within a play unfolds unpredictably as each character unveils ambition and deception. As the line between truth and fiction is blurred, nothing is what it seems and each moment brings another shocking revelation.

Deathtrap opened on Broadway in February 1978, was nominated for four Tony awards, and ran for over four years (1,793 performances) becoming the longest running mystery (and fourth longest non-musical) ever. Although many actors played the lead roles during the run (originally John Wood and Victor Garber, notably followed by John Cullum, Stacy Keach and Robert Reed), actress Marian Seldes portrayed the wife in every Broadway performance, at that time giving her the Guinness Book of World Records title for most performances in the same role. The 1982 film Deathtrap was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon and Irene Worth.