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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Susy's world where darkness can be her friend and protector Wait Until Dark Sutton Arts Theatre **** Frederick Knott was hardly a prolific playwright with just three to his name including Dial M for Murder, his first, and Wait Until Dark, his last, both thrillers, both turned into hit films and both with elaborate plots. Its almost 50 years since photographer Sam Henderson, played here by the play’s director Tom Cooper, first set foot on stage on Broadway in 1966 with Lee Remick as Sam’s wife Susy and Robert Duvall as the psychopathic Roat. The location might have moved from Greenwich Village in New York to London but apart from monetary amounts – who goes off to the shops with a shopping list and just a pound these days? – the plot has hardly dated. Sam, returning from a trip to Amsterdam to see his Dutch mother, has brought back a doll as a favour to a fellow, woman passenger. The logic and reasoning there is a bit of a stretch but as that is the essence of the play we will let it go. As for the woman, when she broke into Sam’s flat to reclaim the doll she couldn’t find it and, do you remember Roat was a kill for fun psychopath? Well, she didn’t. He rather wanted that doll and it seems Roat has a simple solution when it comes dealing with problems, loose ends, partners no longer needed, anyone who crosses him, or he doesn’t like, or could be a witness, or an informant or . . . you suspect the reason is unimportant, all the results it seems are dead similar.
David Thane as the ruthless Roat whose life is a matter of laugh and death But back to the doll. It’s pretty and pink and also packed with heroin, the reason the afore mentioned Roat wants it back. David Thane has the time of his life as the smiling and joking, sinister and frightening Roat, a man you cross at your peril. It is a lovely performance, although when he appears later pretending to be Roat’s ancient father, perhaps the hint of panto could be turned down to make him more believable and less comic. Just saying. Roat, all smiles and hail fellow well met . . . for now . . . wants the doll back and has recruited to aid him in his task two con men recently released from jail. There’s Croker, played with a sort of hair trigger nervousness by Luke Saldana and Mike played by Ollie Farrelly. Saldana creates an edgy Croker, a character not overburdened with brain power you feel is always on the cusp of snapping into violence, the only argument he really understands. Farrelly’s Mike is a far more controlled affair. He gives us a conman whose heart does not seem to be fully committed to the con the trio are constructing to recover the drug packed doll.
Ollie Farrelly as the reluctant con man Mike The mark for the scam is Susy, Sam’s wife, in a quite wonderful piece of acting from Georgina Kerr-Jones. Susy is blind and Georgina gives us a quite remarkable performance of blindness. It is never elaborate, never pantomime or cliched, she really does make her Susy blind, moving by touch and memory, fully convincing and she displays all the fears and frustrations, and triumphs, that blindness brings. The trio set about convincing her Sam will be accused of the murder of a woman found outside the flat – the woman who gave him the doll for safe keeping. They want to help and tell her she needs to give them the doll, the only evidence linking him to the crime. If only she knew where it was . . . As tension mounts and realisation that all is not right grows she starts to see what is happening . . . but only in her mind’s eye. You feel Mike finds the scam, especially of a blind woman, putting her in mortal danger, is a step too far even for a career criminal, a surrender to morality that will no doubt carry a price in the more brutal world of Roat. Nancy Wright becomes Susy’s unlikely ally as Gloria, a child from an upstairs flat who helps around the flat and runs errands – helps being a loose term here. Nancy makes her bolshy with teenage angst to spare and hardly co-operative in a lovely performance, highlighted by the contrast we see when her day to day mundane tasks actually become a real life, deadly adventure she throws herself into with youthful enthusiasm. She becomes Susy’s eyes, her lookout and confidente.
Georgina Kerr-Jones as the blind Susy secreting a knife as insurance in readiness for the battles ahead It is left to Susy and Gloria to defeat the odds with photographer Sam first waiting for a non-existent client in his studio after a spurious call from Roat, which kept him out of the way for an evening, then Sam then heads off to Brighton on an assignment the next day leaving Susy on a day alone at the mercy of the con artists and their elaborate subterfuge. The spoiler is perhaps in the title. Blindness, visual impairment, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t have a lot going for it most of the time – but once light fades and blackness descends that is the kingdom of the sightless, we are in their world and they live there and know it like the back of a hand the sighted, just visiting, can no longer see. We will say no more. The set from Tom Cooper serves its purpose well as a rather run down basement flat with its street level windows complete with essential to the plot Venetian blinds, although Sam’s darkroom, with its need of total backout, complete with red safelight, seems a little incongruous in a living room – have you ever smelt developer and fixer? and he does have a studio after all - but it does serve to emphasis Sam’s job and the fact the couple are just getting by. It also sets us back in time to the 1960s or so in our digital camera age. Director Cooper, again, and David Ashton were also responsible for the complex lighting and sound plot, lighting being the essential part of the entire play, and it worked well. If one is honest the actual plot does not stand up to close scrutiny but the cast sweep everything along with such gusto and with a pace that discourages too much analysis that they build up their own tension towards the life and death end that even if you knew the 1967 Audrey Hepburn film meant you still feared for Susy in the final good and evil battle with Roat. Well-acted, with a bouquet to Georgina, we are left with an entertaining and gripping thriller building up to a violent end – even if we join Susy in the dark so we can’t see it when it arrives. Susy will be waiting for the dark to 02-10-24 Roger Clarke 24-10-24 |
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