FringeReview UK 2026

The Rat Trap

Troupe and Park Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, Costume, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Park Theatre 200, Finsbury Park

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

A journalist warns her flatmate: “When two brilliant egoists marry, unless one of them is prepared to sacrifice certain things, there is bound to be trouble.” If a soon-to-be-discharged 18-year-old soldier in 1918 can write that, you might predict fireworks on stage. The ever-intrepid Troupe directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward bring Noel Coward’s The Rat Trap to its new centenary premiere at Park 200 till March 14.

It took Coward eight years and the wake of The Vortex in 1924 to never see the limited run The Rat Trap had: since he was busy in Broadway learning snappier dialogue than his first play. Indeed The Vortex released several already-written, now famous Coward standards. But none remotely resemble it in tone except this one; remotely. Only once revived (by the Finborough, where else?) in 2006, it was seen again in a rehearsed reading in 2021 by U.S. playwright Bill Rosenfield; who this time saw its virtues. He’s ‘reimagined’ it. Rosenfield suggests the Act Two row needed most attention. There won’t be a better chance to see this semi-precious gem of Coward’s, now running at two hours twenty with interval. Whatever follows here, do see it.

It’s novelist Sheila’s (Lily Nichol) best friend Olive Lloyd-Kennedy (Gina Bramhill) who’s warning Sheila on her imminent wedding: to the less talented aspiring playwright Keld (Ewan Miller). Though not the most scintillating Coward opening ever, it’s engaging enough to make you miss Bramhill’s sparkling and witty Olive when she goes. And I miss her. Luckily she returns, though we’re seriously in need of her before then.

Coward’s own fears of brilliant women (as well as himself) being stifled by traditional role expectations is deployed so quicky you might guess he writes from vicarious experience. Luckily, two women friends escaped, but the assertion at one point that only an “abnormal” male mind can understand women ripples out. Delicious references to first nights and – as Kell blurts – that stenographers might transcribe their rows for domestic drama, punctuates and points up the self-consciousness of the characters, like cut-glass bowls. “Stenographers” isn’t quite idiomatic but the point’s clear.

The brilliance of the diaphanous curtains whisked away at the start, like veils to truth, reveals this Park 200 stage has a superbly spartan set designed by Libby Watson. Over a parquet floor there’s just sofas, chairs and table turning into a memorable desk in Act Two.  It’s Watson’s costumes though that inject pizazz from the off, sweeping Deco curves to sculpt bodies with an almost Sixties glare. Meticulously researched slacks and trousers (more late 20s) worn by the friends give way, in Sheila’s case, to a baby-blue servitude of sailor-suit dress in Act Two. Indeed her inner life is charted throughout in her change of attire. Keld’s too from casual to tweed to subfusc. Even down to two characters’ rain-soaked coats. Neatly lit by Jamie Platt with a reveal in the brief Act Four with Ed Lewis’s unobtrusive sound composition, the production’s a model of classy restraint, with clothes talking.

Divorcée Olive’s understated prognosis of just who’s going to buckle to whom is underscored by her proclaiming it’s the more intelligent one. Though everything’s set up a little rapidly it’s pacy too, and Bramhill wastes no time in establishing Olive’s qualities: indeed Olive’s love for Sheila is both the kind you feel she really needs; one which only whispers its name.

Before the engaged couple have time to settle they stage with Olive’s connivance a ‘discovered’ snog-scene. Enter poetaster Edmund Crowe (Daniel Abbott) and romance-writer Naomi Frith-Bassington (Alisa Joy), a squirming funny double act. But they’re more, and given humanity. Not only in Edmund’s (like Kell’s) fascination with Ruby Raymond sparking the first jealousy in the couple’s open-plan unmarried state. But their residual decency, both in letting out truths and at points common sense. Though their double-act attempts at finding banal similes for each other creates outrageous pauses. And obliviousness elsewhere makes them both chorus and foil. To whether Kell was nervous on a first night, Sheila’s “I believe he was. He dined out” flies over their heads into the audience.

There’s a touch of exaggeration in Ruby Raymond (Zoe Goriely). She actually trails scent when she enters (a natty olfactory design feature), and at one point perches insolently on Kells writing desk, crossing her legs, when talking in his absence to Sheila and the other writing couple. Ruby’s a shadow of the vicious waitress in Somerset Maugham’s 1915 Of Human Bondage. There’s snobbery in Coward’s creation, though based on some experience. And there’s not just ruthlessness but neediness and triumph in Goriely’s brilliantly acrid yet vampy variety girl. Servant Burrage (a superbly iron and velvet Angela Sims) is given a foil role, simmering in immensely watchable, watchful silence. That’s bar one outburst when she declares who she’s taking orders from. And in Act Four Sims comes into her own. These lesser characters already own a Coward trait: generosity in establishing their roles.

There is though a sense where the production takes The Vortex as a template to where The Rat Trap might have gone had Coward revised it. To a degree a tragic fervour is injected where it doesn’t quite flourish.  There’s enough in Sheila to give such weight, but the vehemence and under-developed suddenness of the marriage’s descent is partly Coward’s fault; and partly a glaring tone that tries to match Vortex-like fugues. It’s understandable, though needs to be more naturalistic at key points leading up to the big row. Like Coward’s jump-cut to bitterness in a few months, Keld’s outbursts are unprepared for as we open Act Two. After all, it took Elyot and Amanda several years in the rear-view mirror of their marriage.

Keld’s Act Two switch is abrupt, climaxing in: “Domestic matters are more your domain than mine.” That earns an audience gasp. As well as petty refusals to lend Sheila a pencil. Miller’s both gooey to start then bad-tempered and touchy to a degree. He uses expansive tetchy hand-movements and his whole body to menace with the loss of a comma or an idea, probably the same thing. He makes of Keld someone believable in his own transformations: opportunity and fame swiftly blind Keld, and Coward deploys something of his mature subtlety in gradating Keld’s obliviousness.

Nevertheless Miller’s interaction with Nichol has gone 0-100 and turned 180 very quickly. If it’s Coward’s fault there might be a slightly less steep gradient to a climactic Act Three reveal, much has been said in the anger of Act Two. Nichol too is forced to the same steepness and as it has to end explosively it’s tricky to get that right. Slightly more naturalness might get over Coward’s own bumps.

Nichol though is wholly believable in her moments of devastation. Stylish throughout, she carries the weight of loss, laconic chill and increasing numbness superbly. It’s at their quietest these two also score, though the arguments are horribly thrilling.  The end, which shows several outcomes possible, is wonderfully unsettled. It’s at moments like that you see The Vortex glimmer. It’s not quite there, but with this, in Rosenfield’s judicious pruning, you see Coward’s first essay in the impossibility of marriage: here realised without brittle laughter, except, thankfully in Bramhill’s Olive. She’s there, rightly, at the end, as she was at the start. Unmissable.

Movement Director Ingrid McKinnon, Fight Director Claire Lewellyn for Rc-Annie,  Costume Supervisor, Caroline Hannan, Stage Manager Lois Sime, ASMs Julia Wilkens, Molly Nice, Abigail Grimes, Natasha Werblow, Assistant Director Kyle Smith,  Production Manager Lewis Champney for eStage, Press Kate Morley PR, Photo Credit: Mitzi de Margary, Producer Ashley Cooke for Troupe.

Published February 3, 2026 by Simon Jenner