Guest Blog: 'At First, I Dismissed It': Writer Bill Rosenfield on Rediscovering Noël Coward's THE RAT TRAP at the Park Theatre

What does it mean to ‘reimagine’ Noël Coward's relatively unknown play The Rat Trap?  

First some context:

To live in London with over one hundred theatres in the city is this former Drama Lit Major's dream come true. There are plays everywhere, not just in theatres but in pubs, in basements, in ‘found’ spaces, or warehouses. Plays of all shapes, sizes and quality. It's a theatre fanatic’s idea of heaven.

London theatres love to ‘rediscover’ plays, which, for whatever reason, have been ‘lost.’ Most of the time those plays, while often amusing, are basically curiosities; relics from an earlier simpler era.  They'll play in Off West End venues and they have a devoted audience of which I am a member.

It was at one of those theatres in 2006 where I first encountered Noël Coward's The Rat Trap. I had never heard of it and when it was announced that it was being produced for the first time since 1926 - and being a huge Coward fan - I knew I had to see it. Sad to say, I wasn't impressed. It seemed old and fusty. I dismissed it. 

Fifteen years later it was being given a ‘rehearsed reading’ as part of the Noël Coward Exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery. How could I resist the chance to see The Rat Trap twice in my life? Especially since Noël Coward himself never even saw it once.

The reading was a revelation to me. It was read by an ethnically diverse cast in contemporary clothing and the issues it was dealing with (can two creative people manage a marriage alongside their careers and what pressures does society put upon a creative woman as opposed to those imposed on a creative man?) are still being debated today even more fiercely than they were back then.

The next day I wrote to Alan Brodie, Coward's agent (and mine as well):

‘I went to The Rat Trap on Monday and while I had seen it at the Finborough and was grateful for the opportunity, I also thought that it was one of those plays that is probably happier in a drawer somewhere. But this reading may have proved that theory wrong. There’s some editing that needs to be done in some of the argument scenes but it really held up well and the Ibsenesque aspect of the play proved quite surprising and effective.’

Alan and his associate Alison Lee gave me the opportunity to examine the play to make it work for contemporary audiences.

And so I did. I began the process by doing a digital cut and paste but after an hour or two of tedious word processing I found it easier to just re-type the entire play and then reimagine from that version. It was the smartest move I could make; sure it was time-consuming but it afforded me the opportunity to experience actually writing the play; to consider every word that eighteen-year-old Coward wrote and to get to the core of the issues he was exploring.

The result is a refined depiction of complex human relationships from a young playwright who would become one of the legendary figures of the English speaking theatre.