Theater review: ‘Wait Until Dark’ powerful
by Tim Reid, take 5 correspondent
published January 25, 2008 12:15 am
http://www.take5online.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880124074
ASHEVILLE — Asheville Community Theatre turns up the terror quotient in Frederick Knott’s classic thriller “Wait Until Dark.”
Susy Hendrix (Heather Johnson) is about as vulnerable as you can get — a blind woman at home alone in New York City who is besieged by three criminals determined to get a doll filled with heroin. Her husband Sam (Chris Martin) was given the doll on a business trip but has somehow misplaced it. The crooks figure his handicapped wife will be an easy prey to trick or coerce into surrendering it.
While Sam is away at work, Mike (Don Clancy) shows up pretending to be a friend of her husband.
Susy figures she needs a friend when police Sgt. Carlino (Alan Wohl) shows up asking questions about her husband and the now all-important doll. Her mounting alarm turns to terror when she is visited by the sinister-sounding Harry Roat (Charlie Passacantando).
Susy enlists an unlikely ally in her struggle to find out the truth — an exasperating but perceptive young girl from the upstairs apartment. Fourth-grader Lindsey Salvati nearly steals the show as Gloria, who darts in and out of Susy’s apartment at will, obviously enjoying the advantage that sight gives her over an adult.
Heather Johnson undergoes a marvelous transformation as Susy, who at first seems so vulnerable but then turns the tables on her attackers, using darkness as a weapon.
Many people will remember “Wait Until Dark” from the 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin. Thanks to director Ralph Redpath and a strong cast, the stage version has lost none of its power.
Tim Reid reviews theater for the take5. He can be contacted at timreid4@charter.net.
25 January 2008
Asheville Community Theatre thriller
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With a somewhat overdramatic Hitchcockian violin overture, we are thrown into the first scene of ACT’s production of Wait Until Dark, by Frederick Knott, directed by former ACT artistic director Ralph Redpath. The exposition and set-up process of the opening scene was actually quite slow and drawn-out, leaving me to wonder exactly how long we would have to wait until dark (sorry). Dan Clancy brought strong presence and pretty good “bad guy” attitude as Mike, while Alan Wohl, doing his best Buddy Hackett as the other con artist, Carlino, provided some decent comic relief, although I’m not sure if a bit wherein he wiped fingerprints off of everything in the apartment while simultaneously touching the same things with bare hands was intentionally humorous or not. Charlie Passacantando, as Roat, looked and sounded great in the part, but his performance actually seemed to be a large part of the pacing issue. His laborious delivery of his lines as he moved all over the stage ended up giving this first scene all the tension and urgency of a petting zoo. Sure, the goats might bite, but I wouldn’t sweat it too much.
Fortunately, things picked up as the show went on. Heather Johnson was strong as Susy, immediately likeable and later an incredibly clever, brave, resourceful, and real heroine. Lindsay Salvati, as Susy’s young neighbor, was adorable and precocious, more than holding her own with the adult actors on stage. The climax of the play was built to quite nicely, but fell a little short of being as suspenseful as I would’ve liked. It was good, just not great, and again, similar pacing problems to those at the beginning. (Side note: this is something that it seems can’t be helped, probably for fire code blah blah blah, but I wish theatres could have ALL the lights out: runners, exit signs, everything, for the big black-out scene in this show. Alas.) Overall, though, a satisfying theatre experience.
(In which I vent about some purely scriptural grievances that have nothing to do with ACT's production specifically)
I hadn’t seen this play or the movie in years, and some stuff really just made me scratch my head a little. Susy seems kind of helpless and dependent on her husband at the beginning of the show, and she hasn’t been blind for terribly long (it isn’t stated just how long, but it doesn’t seem to be for more than a few years). However, as the play progresses, she is able to identify people by their gait and identify rather specifically what type of shoes their wearing, and notices total incidentals like people’s moving the window blinds and pieces together that they might be sending secret messages via said blinds?? I don’t know.... I mean I know your other senses become heightened when you lose one, etc, but it just started to seem a little out-there at some points. Also, in preparation for her big confrontation with the bad guys, she instructs Gloria to get ammonia to pour into a vase, and vegetable oil to block the smell. Who knows that?! Maybe it’s in the Ass-Kicking Housewife’s Handbook or something. Okay, that’s all.
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