“Death Trap” reviewed by Julia W. Rath

***** An excellent performance calls for a great script. There is a good reason why Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” holds the record for the longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway.

Fine acting and directing are the hallmark of MadKap Productions’ revival of this highly original play. For starters, Michael Lomenick is a tour de force. As Sidney Bruhl, he makes for a convincing playwright and professor of drama and holds the show together as its protagonist. Jeanne Dwan as his wife Myra Bruhl is willing to go along with his schemes and whims but only so far: She’s basically a moral person at heart, and you begin to wonder why she puts up with a man who likes writing thrillers and murder mysteries and who hangs all sorts of weaponry on the walls of his home office.

Basically, Sidney starts to feel like a has-been. Even when his plays are being produced, his scripts seem to go nowhere, and the theatre critics think that his ideas are stale. However, the previous semester, Sidney had a student named Cliff Anderson (Beck Damron) who has just sent him an unsolicited copy of his most recent play for his opinion. Sidney doesn’t even recall who the student was or what he looks like. But once he reads the script, entitled “Deathtrap”, he decides it’s destined to be a successful hit. Considering that he has been in an eighteen-year slump in his scriptwriting life, Sidney suddenly gets the brilliant idea to murder his student so he could take his new script and appropriate it to himself. After all, he has written so many thrillers in the past that it should not be too difficult to commit a real live murder. Right?

Sidney and Myra live next door to a psychic named Helga Ten Dorp (played by BEKA, who is a real stitch with all her intentional overacting). Helga says that she sees pain; she sees death; she sees all sorts of horrible things happening to people—and the Bruhl’s house seems to hold all these bad vibes. But does she get it right? And later on in the show, we are introduced to Sidney’s attorney Porter Milgrim (Aidan Steinberg), who is also an aspiring playwright, writing a script about Felix Frankfurter, entitled “Frankfurter.” Just like Bruhl’s last attempts, apparently this script is not a wiener (pun intended). I don’t want to reveal too much more about “Deathtrap” or the play with the exact same title that this show revolves around. But I do need to mention that the tension that the audience experiences due to threats of violence and depictions of actual violence is palpable, and Christa Retka has done a great job imparting this emotion to all of us through wonderful stage direction. What I liked best about this production, however, is how well the various actors die on set and how “lovingly” they are assisted in doing so. (Did I already say too much?) Such realistic depictions of violence could not have been done any better, thanks to fight choreography by Brian Plocharczyk and intimacy direction by Paige Klopfenstein.

Set design by Brian Wasserman is fantastic. We see marine blue walls, French doors in the background, a fireplace, plus furniture such as a desk, chairs, and a settee to make for a realistic-looking office/sitting room. There are two tall bookcases containing glasses and liquor bottles, not to mention books—and a skull on one of the shelves. We see manual typewriters and a black dial telephone and discussions about carbon copies and broken Xerox machines, circa the early 1970s. (The play was written in 1978.) As alluded to earlier, nicely unusual is the room’s array of swords, knives, and other weaponry attached to the walls, including a pair of handcuffs supposedly once worn by Houdini for an act years ago—with a Houdini poster to match. Costumes by Wendy Kaplan are appropriate for that era, but most notable is BEKA’s whimsical and timeless Eastern European costume, characteristic of a quirky clairvoyant. Lighting design by Pat Henderson is exactly what it needs to be for such a small stage.

The strangest part of the evening happened in real life during intermission: when the handcuffs (a la Houdini) suddenly disappeared—and then miraculously reappeared, making the pause in between acts somewhat longer than intended. Needless to say, this extensive search for the missing cuffs planted an idea in my head having to do with Chekhov’s gun. (Please look that one up, if you don’t already know what I’m referring to!)

“Deathtrap” is a rare combination of funny and horrific at the same time. It’s a compelling story that draws you into the characters and deeper and deeper into the plot with its twists and turns, while it constantly resurrects itself. It’s much more than Shakespeare’s concept of a play within a play: It’s more like a hall of mirrors where the images keep reflecting upon themselves.

This dark comedy is sure to delight you.

“Deathtrap” is playing at the Skokie Theatre, 7924 Lincoln Avenue, in Downtown Skokie, through November 23, 2025.

General Admission Tickets: $42
Students and Seniors $38

Performance schedule:

Fridays and Saturdays – 7:30 p.m.
Sundays – 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday Matinee, November 19th at 1:30 p.m.

Note that there are 10 performances only!

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.Skokie.org or https://gopher-halibut-ga77.squarespace.com/ or call 847-677-7761.

To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Deathtrap”.