Firstly, congratulations to Clybourne Park, which transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre tomorrow.

The play has won another award for its earlier run at the Royal Court. As well as being named Best New Play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, it’s also bagged the South Bank Sky Arts Theatre Award. Get booking now if you want to see this fantastic show!

This week’s casting news includes

• Simon Russell Beale will play Stalin at the National Theatre in Collaborators, a new play by Trainspotting writer John Hodge in October
• Another tip from the National: Ashes to Ashes and Upstairs Downstairs stay Keeley Hawes will appear in Rocket to the Moon from March
• Sheridan Smith, fresh from Legally Blonde, is joining Sienna Miller in Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path at the Theatre Royal Haymarket from March
• TV presenter and actress Donna Air is to appear in psychological drama The Watcher at Waterloo East theatre also from March

Finally, the Society of London Theatre has just released the theatregoing figures for last year. And very impressive they are too!

More than 14 million people saw a show at one of London’s major venues last year. 2010 was a record year at the box office, with theatres taking more than £500,000,000; there was also a rise in the number of performances to over £18.5 thousand. Proving what I’ve always known: London theatre is on the up!

When a student sends him an excellent script for a new comic thriller called (funnily enough) Deathtrap, Sidney and his nervy wife Myra joke about killing the young upstart and claiming the play, and the money it’s sure to make, for themselves.

That’s really all I can reveal about the plot of the twisty, pacy, comic thriller Deathtrap which opened in the West End this week. Anything more, and I’d be giving the game away. Although, I can say it’ll make you laugh.

And it’ll definitely make you jump.

Deathtrap takes place in Sidney’s study; a room you’ll instantly spot is littered with potential weapons. Designer Rob Howell’s impressive set is a murderer’s dream: curtains over doors, a spooky staircase leads upstairs, and there’s a slight feeling that there’s nowhere to hide… The constant references to the fact that the house is in the middle of nowhere just enhance the tension.

Russell Beale plays the ageing playwright Sidney with a suitably self-loathing air. In contrast, Jonathan Groff’s naive but precocious young writer, Cliff, really sparkles with irritating confidence. (Glee fans will be pleased to hear there’s more than a little of Jesse St James in this, Groff’s West End debut: the same smarmy insincerity, as well as those sudden flashes of buried, manic anger…)

Less convincing is Estelle Parsons as batty psychic neighbour Helga ten Dorp. The constant references to the fact that she’s a funny character only serve to highlight that she’s not, and her final summing up of the play in the last act felt like a real waste of time.

But if you like comic, knowing, self-referential melodrama, with an element of the thriller and a touch of silliness mixed in, you’ll love Ira Levin’s witty play. And it’ll probably have you double checking you’ve locked the back door at night…

Deathtrap at the Noel Coward Theatre is booking until 22 January. Book tickets here