Deathtrap Poster Gallery

The set decoration for Carpenter Square Theatre's 2000 production of DEATHTRAP included a series of show posters depicting Sidney Bruhl's plays.

Based on their design work on the slideshow used in TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, director Jo Perryman asked Don Lusk and Phil Carlton to create the DEATHTRAP posters.

Lusk comments, "The script only mentions the titles of the plays, so part of the fun of designing these layouts was coming up with the 'plot' of the play and finding suitable imagery to illustrate it."

"We also had fun coming up with the actors names. At first, we were just going to invent the actor's names, but with the exception of the GUNPOINT poster, all of the names are real actors who appeared on Broadway in the '60s and '70s. For THE MURDER GAME poster, we used the names of the original Broadway cast of DEATHTRAP."

"GUNPOINT was our humble tribute to the Saul Bass graphic style."

"Since DEATHTRAP is set in the late '70s, we assumed that the success of A CHORUS LINE and COMPANY would not have gone unnoticed by Sidney Bruhl, considering the artistic slump he's experiencing when the play opens. MURDERSONG was our concept of what you'd get if Sidney tried to create a musical version of his successful play THE MURDER GAME by collaborating with some of Broadway's hottest creative talent of that period."

"It's difficult to see in the small image, but the grey wash across the background is actually a montage of musical notes that looks quite striking on the full sized poster."

"DISCONNECTED wasn't mentioned in the script, but we needed a couple of extra posters and we found the great image of the phone and wanted to use it. So we just had to come up with a title. Of course, DIAL M FOR MURDER and SORRY, WRONG NUMBER were already taken so we brainstormed for a while and came up with about 20 names before settling on DISCONNECTED. Some of the rejected names included: THE CALL OF DEATH, WHEN DEATH CALLS, CALL ME MURDERER, DIALING FOR DEATH, DIALTONE, 555-KILL, BUSY SIGNAL, AREA CODE, and LAST CALL."

Poster designs by D&P Consulting