Review: THE MANTRAP, Theatre Royal Windsor - Tour
Photo credit: Supplied by the production
The rights to the French play, A Trap for a Lonely Man, set in the Alps by Robert Thomas (written in 1960), were apparently purchased by legendary film director Sir Alfred Hitchcock to turn into a film but he died in 1980 before he could make it. Sean Aita has updated and relocated the basic story to a remote holiday let in Cornwall, but where there is still good mobile phone reception and has renamed it, The Mantrap. The promotion says “Memories can lie, identities are stolen but someone always knows the truth” so we are warned that not all is at it seems and we are in the era of fake news.
The man concerned is Daniel Edwards (played by Pavan Maru) who we meet alone, sat on the settee in the lounge of the holiday rental, staring forlornly at his phone in November. When the Inspector (John Goodrum with a heavy Cornish accent) arrives, we discover that his wife of seven months, Lizzie, has gone missing in the last ten days and the police search has thrown up no leads. The Inspector declares “people don’t just vanish” but reports no trace of her mobile phone and suggests that “maybe she doesn’t want to be found?” We later learn that she is due to inherit £3million from her elderly Uncle in Paris. Thus, it sets up the mystery. Where is she? Why has she disappeared? Over the course of four acts, the mystery deepens with plenty of twists and turns to create an amusing comedy thriller.
The arrival of the Rev Susan Green (Susan Earnshaw) with Lizzie (Sarah Wynne Kordas) who has been staying with her at the vicarage for a few days, seems to resolve the mystery early on except that Daniel says that the woman is not his wife, despite the pictures of them together on her phone and a great deal of detailed knowledge. When another mystery woman literally gatecrashes the property (Juliette Strobel) and starts rolling a cannabis joint, Daniel is relieved to find she recalls meeting his wife Lizzie in a pub in London and can positively identify whether the woman is her or not. To reveal more would spoil the play but it sets up several more surprising twists before we discover the truth.
As one character observes “it is not as simple as it seems” and “I could not believe it either”. That is the problem, none of the characters are genuinely believable; they all seem like caricatures borrowed from elsewhere, most notably the Vicar and the Inspector from The Vicar of Dibley, and the tension and mystery is often negated by a comedy moment. Conal Walsh’s set design is a basic functional box set, designed for touring and enough to set the scene. The lightning flashes and sound of rain outside add some tension. Director Karen Henson has kept the pace slow and mechanical so that there is too much time to reflect on what we are seeing and speculate what is going on, which defuses the tension and lessens the impact of the twists when they come. It leaves you giggling rather than shocked and that is maybe the intention.
It has the feel in the design and execution of a good old fashioned repertory company, a perfectly serviceable production but one that would have benefited from a little more rehearsal time and some more character development and nuance in the performance. We were reminded of the 2017 production of Anthony Horowitz’s Mindgame at the Theatre Royal Windsor which played similar tricks on the audience, but the script, setting and performances were all stronger and the impact more thrilling. The Mantrap leaves you wondering what Hitchcock would have made of it, and we feel sure it would have made another classic Hitchcockian thriller on screen.
At a time when the Arts Council of England report a drop in touring drama and audience numbers, we need producers like Tabs Productions to stage plays like this and it is inevitable that the risks mean the budgets are tight but we should support their efforts. They are back in Windsor with another thriller The Nightmare Room in August and if you like a thriller with a sprinkling of comedy and a pleasant walk along the River Thames in Windsor before, these two thrillers are for you.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
The Mantrap plays at Theatre Royal Windsor until 25 April, with further info here.