Timely and Timeless

Step right over here? Step right over there?

Just step right in.

Passing through the doors of Las Vegas Little Theatre tonight, theatergoers are faced with an unprecedented opening-night event -- a choice.

This is an LVLT first as two productions kick off simultaneously, same night, side by side.

Straight ahead as you stroll in, the mainstage theater goes curtain-up on Ira Levin's mystery-cum-thriller-cum-comedy, "Deathtrap." Or turn right and amble down a hallway to the smaller, cozier Black Box Theatre, where the 9/11 comedy-drama "Recent Tragic Events" -- yes, that's "9/11" and "comedy" in the same description -- bows on the tragedy's eighth anniversary.

"The play takes place on Sept. 12, 2001, so I really jockeyed for having this opening date," says TJ Larsen, the "Recent Tragic Events" director. "I didn't intend to poach on our own shows, but I also thought it would be a neat idea to open the entire season in one big opening night and see how it works. It's an experiment."

Performances routinely overlap when separate shows have staggered openings in the twin venues, but LVLT never before dovetailed their debuts, competing for patrons on arguably the biggest night of their runs.

There are enough shows. Is there enough audience?

"I originally told him no, we're not going to compete with ourselves and open on the same night, but he made a case for it, so I agreed. We'll see what happens," says LVLT president Walter Niejadlik, noting that the scheduling of "Deathtrap" was locked in because season tickets had already been sold. "We did kind of warn TJ that if I have an opportunity to publicize 'Deathtrap' or 'Recent Tragic Events,' 'Deathtrap' wins. There's only so much money a Black Box show is going to generate. The mainstage show pays the rent."

Contemporary comedy-drama vs. classic mystery-thriller.

In the former, playwright Craig Wright contributed to the burgeoning canon of 9/11-themed theater, his semiabstract and wholly strange 2003 piece opening to sitcom-style rhythms and eventually mining deeper human questions triggered by tragedy. Set the day after the day that devastated New York City and Washington, D.C., rocked America and shook the world, the play takes place in Minneapolis as a woman awaits a blind date while worried that she hasn't heard from her twin sister, a student in New York.

"It does start off with situational comedy because what could be more bizarre than going out on blind date in the midst of the 9/11 tragedy?" Larsen says. "(Wright) includes a couple of wacky neighbors to add to the surrealistic quality, and in the second act he adds a sock puppet. He defies convention and as you go it juxtaposes the blind date going awry with more things of a quantum physical nature, as to how we view freedom and predestined situations."

In Wright's peculiar creation, that sock puppet -- portrayed as a beer-swilling version of author Joyce Carol Oates -- delivers the play's most powerful speech about free will and the ripple effects of tragedy. "It says we're all dealing with this so sit back, let it drench you and see what you can learn from it, don't just wallow in the heartache and absolute terror of it -- that speech breaks my heart," Larsen says.

"It's such brilliant writing, so poignant. You can laugh, then in two minutes be very emotional. I want people to walk away thinking, 'Do we make our own choices, or do we allow our choices to be made for us?' "

While not as socially resonant, "Deathtrap" -- which wound up fourth among the longest-running nonmusicals in Broadway history with 1,809 performances over four-plus years -- uses a play about a play to play on audience expectations with a plot so twisty it would put a pretzel to shame.

"It's got that old-school thriller feel to it," says director Shawn Hackler. "It requires an effective handling of the beats and suspense and building from the ground up. We have a lot of suspenseful moments people can really buy into."

In "Deathtrap," a once-successful, down-on-his-box-office playwright discovers a novice writer's brilliant new script for a play titled -- need you really ask? -- "Deathtrap." The desperate has-been tells his wife he'll offer the rookie scribbler his services to rewrite it -- then murder him, claiming the play as his own. Unsurprisingly, his underhandedness unravels until nearly every character's lusting after this potential piece of literary gold. Throughout the devious doings, laughs leaven the lethal acts.

"There are moments when it's nice to have that comedy," Hackler says. "Where you can step back from saying, 'Oh God, what's going on?' and get a chuckle, then go right back to somebody getting shot or stabbed or strangled."

Hey, what's life without a few laughs between shootings, stabbings and strangulations?

Yet Hackler isn't inclined to commit any of those against fellow director Larsen as both plays vie for playgoers' attention in what amounts to Opening Night-A and Opening Night-B.

"I thought it was a little weird," Hackler says. "But they've got a pretty solid customer base in both theaters. And I think it's great that we've got enough theater that we can put up two at once and still have audiences."

Come on in.

Step this way. Or that way.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.