The Rat Trap at Guildhall

A sold-out Script-in-Hand performance of The Rat Trap by Noêl Coward’s was staged at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery on Monday 4 October 2021. The production was directed by Alexander Lass and produced by Sarah Lawrie, and staged among the unique setting of the Noël Coward: Art & Style exhibition at the Gallery.

The Rat Trap was Coward’s first solo attempt at playwriting, written when he was just 18. An acerbic study of gender politics featuring a cast of seven (five women and two men), the plot follows Sheila, a burgeoning novelist, and Keld, an aspiring playwright, who marry in haste and repent at Belgravian leisure. Last produced at the Finborough Theatre in 2006, it has otherwise not been mounted professionally for some eighty years. Despite being written in the last few weeks of The Great War, The Rat Trap is an arrestingly modern domestic drama exploring themes which remain relevant to a 21st Century audience.

In his 1937 memoirs, Present Indicative, Coward writes that ‘it was much steadier than anything I had done hitherto...when I had finished it, I felt, for the first time with genuine conviction, that I could really write plays.' 

Another Coward late event is being planned to take place at the Gallery in late October, with details due for release shortly.