By Uta Buhr
“Deadly Game”
Crime time at the English Theatre of Hamburg!
In the lobby the spectators are 
greeted by a poster warning them not to catch a fright when confronted with the notorious
“smoking gun.” The explosion during the first act is indeed very impressive, the more so as one of the actors is shot dead and is lying in a pool of blood on the shining floor of Camille Dargus’s elegant Manhattan apartment. Come to that, this “youngish” lady is a famous jewelry designer with a preference for one-night-stands with attractive very young men. The night before, she had invited Billy, a handsome waiter, into her house. 
Nothing unusual so far. However, when she wanted to get rid of him in the morning, he refused
to leave and turned out to be a blackmailer who filmed their intimacies in her bedroom. Instead of getting hysterical, Camille kept a cool head und instantly called her security guard Ted to throw her unwelcome visitor out of her flat. From now on this very intricate story gains momentum. It is very essential to listen very closely to every word exchanged between the actors on stage. Is Billy really dead and which role does the beefy Ted play in this murderous game? What happened to Camille’s rich husband who left her a fortune after his death? And what finally became of that mysterious son of hers?
The American author David Foley is already well- known to many theatre goers on both sides of the Atlantic. His latest play “Deadly Game” only recently premiered in the United States where it won the famous Edgar Allan Poe Award for crime fiction. Foley is an extremely productive author whose plays include – among others – “Paradise”, “In Exile” and “A Hole in the Fence.” Foley loves the thrill of witty crime fiction. As to thrillers such as “Deadly Game”, he holds a mirror up to us when saying: “We love blood. We love murder. We love danger and double-crosses and the moment when the safe, predictable world gives way. We love them in a thriller (because) thrillers allow us to slip the cost. They allow us to laugh as we gasp, to feel horror with pleasure, to ride death and danger like a rollercoaster. … I loved Ira Levin’s fiendish entertainments and the elegant gamesmanship of Anthony Shaffer’s ‘Sleuth’. Writing ‘Deadly Game’, I rediscovered the luxurious addictive pleasures of these stories: mysterious strangers, priceless jewels, unsavoury secrets and death not from natural causes. We get a lot of tragedy in the world. We get a lot of blood and betrayal. But (in ‘Deadly Game’) we just have fun.”
The three actors – Joanne Hildon as Camille, Warren Adams playing Billy, and – last but not least – Les Kenny-Green in the role of security guard Ted, are perfectly up to their parts in this thrilling game. Congratulations!
Final performance: July 3, 2010
We shall inform the readers of our DAP Homepage about the next premiere in early autumn as soon as possible. The title of the new play is not yet known to us