Decent conceit, just a shame about the plot
Wait Until Dark Richmond Theatre & touring
What with the nights drawing in, the work-grind resuming and ominous news aplenty, who wouldn’t be forgiven for immediately craving a dash of escapism? Those impatient to get to the nearest playhouse may spy a tempting carrot in the shape of this 1966 stage-thriller from Frederick Knott – the former Royal Artillery major who struck it lucky with that reputable spine-tingler Dial M for Murder. But even those who can’t resist a bit of creaky rep may end up feeling as if they’ve been bludgeoned by a very large stick of authorial ineptness.
Wait Until Dark was Knott’s third and final “mystery” play – and his powers of invention, as well as his drive to put pen to paper, were already on the wane.
The melodrama benefits from a promising enough conceit – centring on a young blind woman who must outsmart a bunch of crims who trick their way into her Notting Hill basement flat to get their mitts on a child’s doll stuffed with trafficked heroin. Yet the fiendishly knotty plot requires you to overlook glaring implausibilities – her photographer husband agreeing to bring this creepy object home with him after a trip abroad in the first place, the thugs’ identity-assuming subterfuge to take by guile what they could demand by force, and so on.
You’re often in the dark as to quite what’s happening and why, and the cast in Alastair Whatley’s sluggish touring production for Original Theatre Company frequently sound as if they’re groping for the most elementary psychological motivations. The undoubted draw, all the same, is the spectacle of plucky, visually impaired actress Karina Jones – registered blind at the age of 13 – taking the leading role of home-alone Susy (played in the 1967 film, to Academy Award-nominated effect, by Audrey Hepburn).
If acting is mainly, as Spencer Tracy had it, the art of knowing your lines and not bumping into the furniture, that feat takes some doing when the set resembles an obstacle course: Jones is required to navigate a cluttered living room and clatter down a perilously steep staircase.
You can grasp the complexity of this endangered woman’s situation – totally reliant on auditory clues to rumble the intruders – but there’s nary a genuine shiver of dread about her fate. That’s Knott’s failing – although even the climactic thrill of a sustained blackout (which patrons are advised about at the start) is a let-down thanks to the ongoing illumination of the exit signs. Dated tosh colliding with modern-day health-and-safety nonsense: best, I’d say, to give it a wide berth.