Review: AN ACT OF THE IMAGINATION is a Killer at Oyster Mill

Playwright Bernard Slade is best known to theatre lovers for the sweetly touching SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR. Unlike many playwrights who stick to a theme or a genre, however, Slade is versatile, and in AN ACT OF THE IMAGINATION he trades sweetly touching for intense whodunit. A two-act, rather than the classic British three-act, drawing room mystery, it trades oddly sweet adulterous romance for, well, rather scary adulterous murder. Unless it isn't. Because protagonist Arthur Putnam, mystery novelist, has written something out of his usual mystery genre and produced a manuscript of an adulterous romance that's bound to be a killer, in more ways than one... and because Arthur is just a little bit too dotty to notice what's going on around him.

AN ACT OF THE IMAGINATION is currently at Oyster Mill Playhouse, with Greg Merkel playing the cheerily unobservant Arthur. Merkel's Putnam isn't senile, just vague, but also neglectful - of his son, of his second wife, of his friends, even of what he's doing at the moment. Merkel brings an air of distracted vagueness akin to the absent-minded professor of legend, an intelligent man who may not have the common sense to come in out of the rain. His younger second wife, Julia, played by Kathleen Tacelosky, isn't altogether thrilled by his neglect of her, though he values her opinions when he remembers that she's there, but she appears even less thrilled by the sudden appearance of a bizarre young woman, Brenda (Kass McGann), whose tale of her own affair with Arthur coincides amazingly with the plot of Arthur's new manuscript. And then there's the little matter of Brenda winding up as dead as the bodies in Arthur's mystery stories.

If Arthur didn't kill her, who could have, and why?

Jack Eilber is Putnam's son Simon, solicitous both of his father and of his stepmother, but nonetheless also a bit hard-up for the cash he needs to start a new business. It doesn't help that Simon's always out of cash, or that his father has become his bank.

Robert Davis plays Putnam's friend, Detective Sergeant Burchett, who has a friendly competition with Putnam over plot holes in Putnam's books, and who is put in the middle when Brenda dies, forced to arrest his acquaintance, whose alibi (that he was watching Burchett on stage in a community theatre mystery play) is failing to hold up.

But when a diplomat's wife (Megan McClain) shows up on the doorstep with a story to rival the dead Brenda's of being Arthur's mistress, matters become more complicated than anything Arthur could hope to have imagined in one of his own mystery novels. McClain's character is as polished and poised as McGann's Brenda is edgy and nervous, bringing perfect contrast to the two real or alleged mistresses, while Tacelosky's Julia is the supportive, self-effacing, and frustrated writer's wife in the flesh. It's the frustration, however, that's key in Tacelosky's performance. The Putnams' marriage has lost its spark, if it's ever had one, and her knowledge of that is palpable.

Kate Merkel plays Holly, the publisher's assistant who becomes Arthur's rock in the midst of the storms of publishing, of suggestions of marital discord, and of arrest for murder. With her help, his new novel might just be proven to be fiction after all.

Directors BrIan Stewart and Candilee Cain have married actors to parts nicely, and keep the pace moving in a show that has the potential to feel slow in spots. It's a slight flaw in Slade's writing - some plot points are a bit heavily lampshaded, enough so that any audience member who's seen a few drawing room mysteries already in their life, especially Agatha Christies, will seize on certain things correctly very early in the story. It's to Slade's credit, however, that all of the revelations in this article still don't give away anything of the twisting, turning, and surprising ending. Prepare for one of the wilder rides of drawing room mystery.

At Oyster Mill through October 9, followed by BYE BYE BIRDIE in November. Visit Oystermill.com for tickets and information.

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