From November 1 through December 10, 2022, at New York City Center Stage II, Mint presented the American Premiere of The Rat Trap by Noel Coward, written when he was 18. The New Yorker hailed the play as “astounding”:

“Coward’s construction is masterly, even at this formative stage—the early banter is witty and epigrammatic, and the later, deadly serious confrontations achieve audience-stilling breathlessness….and the director, Alexander Lass, draws out every bit of wisdom, comedy, and intelligence that the superb cast has to offer.”

Ken Marks, The New Yorker

This remarkably mature drama tells the story of a newlywed couple looking towards a bright future together, two promising writers vowing to support and love each other through the challenges of creative and professional endeavor. Things go even worse than you might imagine

The Rat Trap mixes a caustic realism, with flashes of Coward’s brilliant, biting wit. Looking back on the play in 1937 in Present Indicative, Coward calls it “My first really serious attempt at psychological conflict…When I had finished it, I felt, for the first time with genuine conviction, that I could really write plays.”

“The Rat Trap is unmissable to anyone with an interest in Coward but, thanks to some hilarious dialogue and many penetrating insights, it is more than a theatrical curio.”

David Barbour, Lighting & Sound America

The play was not produced until 1926, riding on the coattails of Coward’s recent successes with The Vortex, Hay Fever and Fallen Angels—not to mention his ascending fame as an actor. Audiences expecting the scandalous decadence and high farce of these other works must have been surprised by The Rat Trap — less dry martini and more bitter stout: dark, strong and a bit sour.

Critical reception of The Rat Trap in 1926 was compromised by Coward himself, as he was on a boat headed to America while it was in rehearsal, giving the clear impression that he didn’t care. “To produce the play on the fringe of town, half apologetically as a work of youth and curiosity was to damage it in advance,” wrote the critic for The Sunday Times. Variety went so far as to say that “Coward had taken no interest in the production. If he had, why did he run away?” It ran for the scheduled two weeks and disappeared. Coward, away from England, never even saw it.