Word: bruhl
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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LAST SATURDAY'S production of Deathtrap destroyed a Lowell House dining hall chair. In the middle of the first act, fading playwright Sidney Bruhl strangles a young admirer who has written a better play than Bruhl ever could. Dramatic realism aside, his attack was so savage that the chair smashed to the floor as the two struggled around the stage...
...good murder mystery the audience should never quite know who murdered whom. But Deathtrap's Russian doll of a plot, who did the killing is sickeningly obvious: what isn't so clear is whom they have murdered. Bruhl, one killer, is not only tormented by his failure of the last few years; he is also experiencing a sort of mid-life self-awareness. Upon receiving the young Clifford Anderson's play in the mail. Bruhl laments his writer's block and starts to assess his chances of bringing his art to life by being able to do Anderson...
Anderson, the seemingly unsuspecting intended victim, makes the mistake of not telling anyone he is visiting Bruhl. And he brings with him the only other copy of the play which so tempts the older man--whose last four plays have flopped, forcing him to live off his wife's dwindling inheritance...
...lines as convoluted as the plot, to the delight of the audience and to the ill health of his wife who cringes when he offers to meet Anderson at the train station and "run you over." When forced to plot a second murder to cover up his first. Bruhl's terror is real as he starts down the path so many have found; that evil only leads to further evil...
...often Deathtrap looks like a film version of a staged performance, so self-consciously theatrical is Lumet's direction. The play was so successful in the theatre, that Lumet can't really be blamed for borrowing some of its techniques for his film. The Bruhl's Hampton home looks lovely with its woodsy interior but it also looks stagey. Doors, windows and a spiral staircase are too neatly arranged around the sides of the set; by shooting rooms up from the floor and down from the ceiling Lumet adds a closed-in effect that verges on the claustrophobic. This...