The play-within-a-play structure works beautifully as playwright  Ira Levin takes us on a succession of plot twists too numerous too count and too cunning to predict.

Deathtrap
By Ira Levin
Kirkwood Theatre Guild
Directed by B. Weller
Through January 28, 2006

Picture the set: Battleaxes, broadswords, maces, pistols, handcuffs, and choke wire decorating every wall. Aside from a Smith-Corona typewriter and a Rubik’s cube, there are few stage props that can’t be used to off someone. Little wonder the play is entitled Deathtrap. Murder is a given; it’s only a question of who and how.

Author Ira Levin is best known for satirizing feminism in The Stepford Wives and unintentionally revitalizing the occult movement in Rosemary’s Baby, both novels turned into blockbuster films­. So give kudos to the Kirkwood Theatre Guild for reviving Levin’s lesser-known but equally compelling stage work.

London-born Anthony M. Mullin is perfectly cast as Sidney Bruhl, a washed-up playwright and closet bisexual who ominously keeps the murder weapons from his previous plays on display in his study. Bruhl spies an opportunity to steal success, however, when ambitious student Clifford (Ben Ritchie) mails him the only copy of his first stab at playwriting. Initially, Sidney is content to crack murder jokes with his wife Myra (a wide-eyed Kay Love), but when Clifford appears at their doorstep, the game becomes real.

The play-within-a-play structure works beautifully as Levin takes us on a succession of plot twists too numerous too count and too cunning to predict. As thespians, Ritchie and Love are merely adequate; their best acting on display when they stop trying to act. It’s Mullin who sparkles, though Janet Robey-Schwartz provides over-the-top comic relief as Helga, a psychic neighbor who senses the danger.

To his credit, seasoned director B. Weller doesn’t change one syllable of the witty dialogue and even follows the original stage directions. Weller also does right by keeping the play set in 1978, a pre-cell, pre-cyberspace era in which plotting the next kill was undoubtedly easier ... or at least simpler.

Given the number of snowy scalps and portable oxygen tanks among the audience (sitting next to one such tank was like sitting next to Darth Vader), it seems that murder mystery theater went out of vogue for anyone under 40 around the same time as disco. It’s a shame, because Deathtrap offers much more than a handful of spine-tingles. It provides a Capote-like insight into the convoluted workings of a writer’s mind. Rarely has the publish-or-perish mindset been so prominently displayed at its most corrupt, and its most comic. Teens and twentysomethings would do well to cast aside their Netflix and their Xboxes for an evening and give the KTG a chance to show them what live entertainment is all about.