San Jose Stage tackles ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice.’
Stage adaptation of noir classic becomes a taut, sexy thriller in a bare-bones production
There’s this dame, see? She’s the kind of dame that’s typically described in exaggeratedly lurid terms by a male author. As James M. Cain introduces her in his 1934 hard-boiled crime novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”: “Except for the shape, she really wasn’t any raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.”
Only trouble is, the dame is married. Clearly that’s going to have to change.
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” is probably best known for its movie adaptations, including a classic 1946 film noir with Lana Turner and John Garfield, and a 1981 neo-noir with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. Now San Jose Stage Company is premiering a new stage adaptation by Jon Jory, the former producing director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, who’s also adapted several Jane Austen novels into plays.
This isn’t the first time Cain’s book has been adapted for the stage. There’s also a 2004 adaptation by Andrew Rattenbury that became a vehicle for Val Kilmer on London’s West End. It’s even been turned into an opera.
Like Cain’s “Double Indemnity,” it’s a play about a relative stranger having a torrid affair with a married femme fatale, and the two of them plotting to kill her husband. (There is, incidentally, never any mention of a postman.)
In this new “Postman,” the dame to kill for is played with sullen sultriness by San Jose Stage mainstay Allison F. Rich, currently starring in her third show in a row for the company after “Sweeney Todd” and Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love.” (She’s also directing the next and final show in the company’s 35th season, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” in June.)
Rich’s Cora has smoldering and tempestuous chemistry with Jonathan Rhys Williams’ hard-edged and restless Frank, a drifter who only wandered into her rural California diner because that’s where he landed after being hurled off a hay truck by a driver who was furious to find a stowaway replacing some of his cargo.
It’s hard to root for the scheming lovers because Cora’s husband
is such a sweetheart. Robert Sicular is a hearty, generous and trusting soul as Nick, a Greek immigrant whom Cora regards with unfathomable revulsion as “greasy.” Sicular also turns up as a gruff coroner and a wily and unscrupulous lawyer.
The rest of the six-person cast also plays multiple roles. Justin Gordon is a slickly insinuating and manipulative district attorney, but also a friendly and curious policeman. Michael Bellino portrays a cynical, seedy detective,
and Tanya Marie is a slyly flirtatious lion trainer (because of course there’s a lion trainer).
Director Ken Kelleher gives the play an effectively stripped-down staging. Giulio Perrone’s bare, black-walled set is wide open, furnished mainly with a few chairs and lent a whole lot of texture by Michael Palumbo’s gloomy lighting. Black-and-white backgrounds projected onto a small patch of the back wall accentuate the sense of being in a vintage film noir. Cliff Caruthers’ sound
design is packed with a great soundtrack of jazz and blues for every mood, from laid-back country blues to hectic jazz horns.
Jory’s adaptation fleshes out some of Cain’s terse storytelling while keeping the general feel of it, giving smatterings of dialogue to characters that don’t talk in the novel. The play’s ending is weirdly abrupt, closing on a potent image but cutting off a full chapter short of Cain’s novel and leaving some obvious plot points unresolved (and leaving the comeuppance that’s practically mandated by the genre incomplete).
On the whole, though, it’s a pleasingly moody and suspenseful thriller that’s a must for fans of film noir and hard-boiled crime yarns.