Director aims to keep audience guessing in cult classic thriller
A hard-boiled detective goes searching for the person who killed his old partner in a play coming to Persephone Theatre — and of course, it’s a comedy.
The Thin Man follows couple Nick and Nora Charles on their vacation to New York. Nick, a former private investigator, catches wind that someone he knew was found dead in the city. He and his wife try to track down who’s responsible while exchanging witty banter.
“It’s a cult classic — and I would invite everyone to jump on the cult classic train,” director Courtenay Dobbie said. “Nick and Nora are famous in the old classic film world, and it’s fun to get on the bandwagon.”
The plot of the show is based off a novel written in the 1930s by Dashiell Hammett, who Dobbie called the creator of the “gritty” detective character that permeates today’s media and who is considered one of the fathers of the noir genre.
The Thin Man was a widely popular book throughout the 20th century, and film and television adaptations of the novel were made in the ’30s and ’60s, respectively.
Dobbie, who said she’s a fan of mystery novels, was familiar with The Thin Man before production started on the play and said it’s an interesting struggle to direct a mystery that she knows the answer to.
“It’s definitely a challenge in the sense that you’re trying to make sure that the suspicion does not land on any particular person,” she said. “You want to keep the audience guessing.”
Hammett’s iconic novel was adapted into a stage play by Lucia Frangione with Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre. Frangione said it can be a bit tough to adapt such old source material into a modern and accessible show.
But she also said she loved putting
together a show with big, “vibrant” characters — and that the most fun was connecting with the character of the lead female Nora.
“I love that a married couple is at the heart of this mystery and that they ’re a detective team,” she said. “I think that’s why they have ... enduring appeal, because everybody wants a partner in crime.”
Frangione said she considers the show’s run in Saskatoon to be a part of the world premiere of the play that started in Calgary. She said the reviews so far have been glowing — and ticket sales in Calgary were strong — which makes it tough to think this might be the last place the show goes for some time.
The new USMCA trade deal has changed the length of time it takes after a creator’s death for their material to reach the public domain. Frangione could adapt Hammett’s novel since it was more than 50 years after Hammett’s death, which has long been the standard in Canada. That time period has been stretched to 70 years, which means that Hammett’s works are technically no longer public domain.
Frangione said she hasn’t heard whether her show will be “grandfathered in,” or if they’ll have to put the rest of their tour on hold. But for now, she’s revelling in a unique and stylistic murder mystery stage show that she had the opportunity to write.
“I think people are going to have a real laugh — I hope they don’t guess ‘whodunit,’ but I don’t think they will,” she said.
I love that a married couple is at the heart of this mystery and that they’re a detective team.