During the 2010s I saw a 2-act play in Birmingham's Alexandra, with a three-character plot along these lines:
- Two people in a house try to kill a third, and think they've succeeded. They wrap him up in a rug and bury him in the garden, which they access via a glass door.
- A few minutes later, the victim emerges alive; the first the audience knows about it is when he suddenly returns to the house and attacks one of the attempted murderers. One of them dies; if memory serves, (i) it was the original would-be murderer and (ii) this ends act 1.
- The two surviving characters discuss how commercially successful would be a story mimicking the details of what just happened, but they ultimately disagree on whether this would be so obvious they'd get convicted of the real killing. At the end of the play, the one too afraid to proceed with publication kills the other, so it won't result in his own conviction.
- Both times a murder successfully occurs, there is sudden loud music together with strobe lighting. Although these details (which I think may also apply to some other scenes, including the first killing attempt) may be production-dependent, they seem so appropriate I suspect they're standard.
Which play this is? Although I don't remember its title, I feel like it was in the dialogue and/or contained at least one word such as death, kill or murder.