16 – 21 May

This is an interesting ‘Whodunwot’; take any group of actors playing any group of characters, drop them into the plot and the machinations will be the same. In that sense there is something archetypal about the way the play works. Excite the audience’s expectations and allegiances, give them a twist or even a double twist and there you have it – the plot is the plot. Intervening dialogue outside of the plot is neither here nor there beyond what the director chooses to give us in the way of clues. A suspect characterization here, a suspiciously flamboyant flourish there and an alert audience will have its antennae activated.

The forgoing being so, the play is an ideal vehicle for translation. Originally a French play by Robert Thomas set in Chamonix, it had its first English language outing in the sixties at the Savoy Theatre, under the title, Trap for a Lonely Man. This latest translation/reworking by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert transposes the scene to America’s fashionable resort in the Catskill Mountains. The central character, Daniel Corban (Patrick Duffy) becomes a sixties advertising executive, fond of golf, credit cards and his new wife who has mysteriously disappeared.

Daniel calls for the police who arrive in the shape of Inspector Levine (Gray O’Brien) only to be completely flummoxed when a woman claiming to be his wife, Elizabeth (Linda Purl) is introduced by the new cleric on the block, Father Kelleher (Ben Nealon). The play then sets about Daniel’s constantly thwarted attempts to prove to the inspector that the new Elizabeth is an imposter and fathom out why she might be engaged in such an elaborate charade. Without breaking the sacred pact between reviewer and theatre (and indeed potential audience) that governs spoilers, there is little more I can say on the matter beyond the obvious, ‘all is not what it seems’.

Mr Duffy makes good use of a radio microphone, which allows him to underplay his character, thus avoiding some of the histrionics which might otherwise have coloured our reading of his intentions. Mr O’Brien’s breezy inspector is the very model of a sixties detective whilst Ms Purl’s flamboyantly devious Elizabeth keeps us guessing all the way. The director, Bob Tomson, knows precisely how such thrillers work and with his consummate cast of actors keeps us guessing until the end in what is a classic of the genre.

★★★☆☆  Graham Wyles 18th May

Photo credit: Jack Merriman