About the Play:

Veronica's Room is a full-length psychological thriller by Ira Levin. A young couple is enticed to a mansion by its caretakers. There, the girl is persuaded to impersonate the deceased daughter of the owner to comfort the confused sister – who believes she's still alive. Wearing the dead girl's clothes and trapped in her room, the nightmare truly begins in this thriller by the author of Deathtrap.

Veronica's Room is a chilling mystery thriller that explores the thin line between fantasy and reality, madness and murder. Susan Kerner, a young Boston college student and Larry Eastwood, a young lawyer she's just met, have been enticed to the Brabissant mansion by the Mackeys, a charming, elderly Irish couple who struck are by Susan's uncanny resemblance to Veronica Brabissant, the long since dead daughter of the family for whom they work. They view Veronica's picture in her room, untouched by time, and the older couple gradually induce Susan to impersonate Veronica for awhile in an effort to provide comfort to the only living Brabissant, her ailing sister living in the past and believing Veronica's alive and angry with her. But once dressed in Veronica's clothes, Susan finds herself locked in the role and locked in Veronica's room. Or is she Veronica, in 1935, pretending to be an imaginary Susan? Veronica's Room leads the audience through a labyrinth of theories as to what is happening that begin, fall, rebuild, then fall again in rapid succession as we struggle to make out what's true, who's who, and what really happened in Veronica's room.. It's like being trapped in someone else's nightmare... with a jarring and surprising climax.

Veronica's Room premiered in 1973 at The Music Box Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The play had a successful off-Broadway revival at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1981 and remains a popular choice for community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Like being trapped in someone else's nightmare...jarring and (with a) surprising climax...a neat, elegant thriller." — Village Voice

"Playwright Ira Levin has a devious mind. In Veronica's Room... he coolly unravels a nightmare of deception so corrupt that each layer peeled away reveals a new and surprising abomination. As he did in his popular thriller Deathtrap, Levin plays a crafty game of psychology, pitting conventional reality and morality against an insidious force of mind-bending guile and rampant depravity." — Los Angeles Times

About the Playwright:

Ira Levin (1929-2007) was an American novelist and playwright. He was twenty-two when he wrote his first novel, the acclaimed A Kiss Before Dying. His debut won the Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best first novel of 1953, launching a career of over 50 years that was characterized by equal success as both a novelist and playwright. He was the king of the high-concept thriller. Three novels were massive bestsellers that were made into highly successful movies – Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys From Brazil. His most successful play, the comedy thriller Death Trap, ran for four years on Broadway.