[Traps] has a title which seems to promise more than the play delivers—or possibly less than the play delivers. Elliptically structured, it features one returning and three regular communards plus a visiting couple. It also features a clock set at real time throughout and a setting … which is sited variously in town and country. I take it these things are not gratuitous; Churchill's purpose nonetheless remains obscure. Thus a character accounted dead soon returns without provocation of comment, another entering in a flourish of anal complex repeats the performance later almost word for word before things turn ugly—ludicrously ugly. After the interval, a destroyed plant is restored.

A fascinating script, always several pages ahead of the audience, especially on critics' night, offers plenty of sinewy lines and joyous juxtapositions and Churchill's most confident and creative deployment of stagecraft to date. The result is that one regrets...