The comedy-thriller Manuscript is as elegantly lethal a cocktail as the cyanide-laced Champagne in the old Agatha Christie story. Think equal parts Christie’s Witness For The Prosecution, Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and Ira Levin’s Death Trap, with a garnish of sliced hipster pretensions of the type David Mamet once specialised in, and you have the recipe for this fiendishly entertaining play.

Now being staged at the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society’s Daylesford Theatre, this three-hander by American playwright Paul Grellong is both diabolically well constructed and feverishly paced. Nothing is exactly what it seems to be in Manuscript. And absolutely nothing happens without a reason.

A stylish, sneaky, cat-and-mouse affair about creativity, opportunism, self-promotion, art, sex and truth, featuring a wild twist ending, Manuscript merits two viewings: the first to simply enjoy the audacious proceedings unfold, the second to admire the consummate skill with which Grellong scatters jigsaw-type clues throughout Manuscript until the final, unexpected revelation emerges.

Under the able direction of local theatre veteran Carol Birch, the young cast of Manuscript is more than equal to the multiple challenges presented by this play.

The action unfolds over two nights in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of David (Geoffrey Faiella), an über-talented but schleppy creative writing student at Harvard. Socially maladroit and something of a shut-in, he is looking forward to enjoying a drug-fuelled pre-party with best friend Chris (Travis Chambray) and his new girlfriend Elizabeth (Paige Hallett) before the glittering couple head out to a swank preppy ball.

But it soon becomes clear David and Elizabeth have a history the fey and perpetually distracted Chris is unaware of. After sending Chris out on a drug-run to the home of an opium-abusing cult writer who has been mentoring (and supplying) David, their backstory is explained. It turns out Elizabeth — a published author although still a college student — owes her book contract less to her minimal talent than her family connections and a willingness to engage in wholesale plagiarism. Specifically, the plagiarising of David’s work.

He had lost his heart (and subsequently his material) to her a year or so earlier. And it was after putting her name to one of David’s unpublished stories that she gained instant celebrity status when the purloined work ran in The New Yorker magazine.

While she has managed to deliver the debut novel which cemented her undeserved overnight reputation as a literary prodigy, she is now stalled and way behind schedule on her second book.

Paige Hallett shines as Elizabeth, the sensual, status-driven and utterly amoral femme fatale of the proceedings. Not so much ethically challenged as completely ethically cleansed, she is willing to take any professional or personal shortcut if it leads to her desired destination — effort-free fame. When Chris returns with the almost completed manuscript of the neighbouring author after discovering him dead from an overdose, Elizabeth immediately seizes on the idea of passing it off as her own sophomore effort

And the still faintly lovestruck David, although already having once been the victim of her wiles, seems prepared to willingly step back into Elizabeth’s web of deceit to help further her unscrupulous plan.

To reveal any more of Manuscript’s plot would be to risk giving away some of the surprises of a play which features more twists and turns than a switchbacking Alpine road. Suffice it to say that like Ms Hallett, Geoffrey Faiella and Travis Chambray give deft, near note-perfect performances as Brooklyn odd couple David and Chris — one a stolid but reserved overachiever, the other a cheerfully blissed out dilettante.

Grellong has an unerring ear for the rapid-fire, irony-laced dialogue of his youthful protagonists and the cast delivers his volleying exchanges between the three very different undergrads with assurance and brio.

Director Birch has a sure grasp of the material and has crafted a smart, engaging and spirited show. And Manuscript producer Jenn Osmond and her crew have clearly worked overtime to ensure top quality production and technical values. Everything from the minimalist set design to the lighting to the authentically textured set dressing and props suggests more than the usual degree of effort when into Manuscript.

The entire production team behind Manuscript deserves to be toasted for their dedication — with a cocktail of sparkling cyanide, naturally.

Manuscript continues its run at the BMDS Daylesford Theatre from June 26-28. Visit their website www.bmds.bm for ticket information.