“The definition of good old-fashioned entertainment.” —Variety PREMISE: Sidney "Four Flops" Bruhl's former writing student presents him with a perfect play; is Sidney desperate enough to kill him for it, and claim it as his own? 2010 West End press photo (feat. Simon Russell Beale and Jonathan Groff, BroadwayWorld.com)

The fifth longest-running play in Broadway history, Ira Levin's Deathtrap melds gasp-out-loud suspense with laugh-out-loud laughs, and continues to be one of the most-performed stage plays, with thousands of productions since its 1978 premiere attesting to its lasting audience appeal.

Like much of Levin's work, Deathtrap broke new ground, with a unique comedy-thriller hybrid formula (then an essentially new conceit), openly-gay characters, and bone-deep meta-theatricality – the latter inspiring innumerable subsequent works of the "So-you-see, what-was-really-going-on-behind-the-scenes-all-this-time-was..." school.

“The structure of Deathtrap still delights me. It seems very unique and special... I guess I really do feel it is the best thing I've done so far.”
    —Levin (Playbill, 1978)

Stacy Keach as Sidney Bruhl (Credit Sy Friedman)

Levin self-ribbingly modeled lead character Sidney "four flops" Bruhl after himself, and his own string of Broadway commercial misfires which followed his early successes as a playwright.

Though Sidney's often been cast as a debonair Englishman, Levin wrote the part as an entirely different type: “John Wood . . . was not the way I had originally seen the role of [Sidney Bruhl] in Deathtrap. He was the producer’s suggestion . . . I thought we should have cast Rod Steiger – someone sweaty, you know? An actor on the ropes.” —Levin (1997)

Deathtrap/Levin received a Tony nomination for Best Play (1978).

Interestingly, Deathtrap is in one sense a furthering of Critic's Choice's central conundrum, i.e. one spouse writing a play the other wishes they weren't; only here, virtually every character is seeking to write the titular "Deathtrap."

“’Deathtrap’ [...] started as a novel. [It] insisted on being a play. It begged to be born a play.” (New York Daily News, 1979)

”I played around with [the] idea for several years – just with the initial situation of the playwright who's blocked, and suddenly there's this perfect play sitting on his desk. And I knew it was some kind of trap – someone was trapping someone; that it was a fake. And I kept coming back to that idea and playing with it, and it took me several years till I finally saw the way to make it work.” (Larry King Show, 1991)

“Stage thrillers have to offer things that can't be gotten [on TV, &c.] The ones that are done for the theater have to have an added ingredient, an added element. It's not that easy to find the something special that makes it worth doing in the theater. In the case of Deathtrap, I hope it's the comedy element that's added into the thrills.” (Fort Lauderdale News, 1978)

• Some 1978 comments from Levin on Deathtrap, and thrillers in general

• The production's custom-fabricated prop crossbow needed to be replaced three times over the show's four-and-a-half-year run, due to string tension-induced wear caused by the number of times it had to be locked and "fired."
• There's an undiscovered Stepford Wives Easter egg in Deathtrap – both are set in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with Deathtrap referencing the realtor "Buck Raymond" – the same realtor who sold the Eberharts their house in Stepford. (The implications of this geographical proximity could actually run quite deep...)
(Deathtrap TV Ad)
• Deathtrap was one of the first Broadway shows to advertise on television, and the first to our knowledge to place ads (in this case, the logo's leering eyes) on the backs of NYC buses – quite a sight for tailgating traffic. When unable to find a satisfactory voice to narrate the TV ad, the show's lead producer Alfred de Liagre Jr. stepped in and provided his own – "murderously funny!"
(Opening of "The Jerk")
• Deathtrap has a movie cameo. In Steve Martin's comedy classic "The Jerk," the opening reveal pans down and across a production of the play, then appearing at Hollywood's Huntington Hartford Theatre (now The Montalban). (Note: Levin did not hate cans.)