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Saturday November 7, 2009
Dial M for Murder
A month of theatre visits began with this innovative production of the 1952 play, made famous by the Hitchcock film of the same name. I thought it was really well done, and the actors were terrifyingly wonderful.
I was particularly smitten by the set, designed by Mike Britton. At first I was unsure - it was a brilliant blood red throughout (walls, floor, carpet), and the whole stage area rotated very slowly as the plot progressed. This sounds very distracting but in fact it took me some time to notice the movement, which says something for the strength of the acting as well as the staging adding to, rather than distracting from, the play. The overall effect was to emphasise the feeling that we were observing the characters as if they were in a goldfish bowl - the dark action played out with the villain and his plan known from the start. I thought it was excellent.
The final key action of the play is carried out off stage - in the previous production, only sound effects are heard, which can add to the tension. In this setting, the back wall of the apartment was a gauze cloth enabling us to see the hallway and directly observe the villain give himself away. My only comment on this is that producing it in this way makes the Scotland Yard detective's commentary on the action in the hallway redundant, and it could have been dropped. The curtain falls on brilliantly silent actors as the villain makes his final doomed entrance.
Robert refused the role of my companion in this outing, which was a shame, as I think he would have enjoyed it. However, he was permanently scarred by the memory of a production I "made him go to" in Worthing many years ago - I have wiped this episode from my memory, but it remains clear to him ("lots of stuff with the telephone" which he remembers as a shortcoming of the staging rather than a key element of the plot...).
Posted by Christina at 9:12 AM. Category: Art and Culture
