BWW Reviews: WAIT UNTIL DARK Lights Up Allenberry Playhouse

Since long before Agatha Christie wrote THE MOUSETRAP, playgoers have loved creepy, scary mysteries. They've never really come creepier or scarier than WAIT UNTIL DARK, Frederick Knott's 1966 play that was quickly transformed into a classic Audrey Hepburn film. There's nothing like the thought of home invasion, or the thought of being blind, to scare an audience. Nor is there anything as disquieting as a devilish neighbor child, unless it's a doll - somehow, in our collective entertainment consciousness, dolls are right up there with clowns for fears that something sinister may be afoot.

WAIT UNTIL DARK plays on all of the things, big and little, that scare the average American. Criminals invading the home. Whether that friendly police officer is in fact a police officer. Whether neighborhood children are really safe. Whether you can trust people you've met while traveling. (Anyone in an airport in the past few decades knows to beware that person who wants you to take a package somewhere for them.) Strange dolls. (There's a reason all those movies and television programs have featured animated dolls that terrorize people. There's an atavistic fear of them that can be as great as the competing desire to play with them.) What would happen to you if you couldn't see, or were otherwise disabled. Trust, in general. Right now it's on stage at Allenberry Playhouse, directed by Artistic Director Roque Berlanga, and it certainly keeps all of those fears, trivial and large, in play for the duration, as Knott intended.

Peter Ripple, Anthony Genovese, and Craig Shimek play the unholy trinity of con men determined to find a heroin-filled doll that's supposedly somewhere inside the Greenwich Village basement apartment of Sam Hendrix, a photographer, and Susy Hendrix, his blind wife. They play a series of mind games with her in which one (Shimek) poses as a police officer, and while another arrives as a phony military buddy of Sam's (Ripple). The third, Harry Roat, Jr. (Genovese) is the man behind the plan, and not quite as non-violent as his associates. Ripple's a believable "Mike Tallman," phony friend of the husband, earning Susy's trust while Sam is out of the house. Shimek, as Sergeant Carlino, may be believable to the audience, but Susy's suspicious. How many police officers wipe down everything they touch? She can't see that, as she's blind - but she can hear it.

Genovese's Roat isn't quite as maniacal as some portrayals make him, which is a relief from the stage offerings that want a man with a huge con going on to be perceived as mildly psychopathic up front. It also makes the second act more realistic and slightly less slasher-film scary that Roat's driven to exasperation over the drugs and money he wants, rather than simply being insanely vicious as some directors make him.

The real acting burden in this play, however, is always upon "Susy", here played by Carson Elizabeth Gregory. On stage except for a few moments throughout the show, the actor taking this part not only has to carry the show, but has to appear to be navigating everything on the stage through memory, rather than seeing anything on it. Playing blind, for a sighted performer not wearing dark glasses, is not easy. It's very difficult to maintain a completely unfocused look for the entire show, or to avoid looking just a little too confident in movement when something on the set has been moved around.

Although Gregory's portrayal of a blind woman is not without its flaws - she sometimes appears a little too visually focused (Hepburn's film portrayal is almost unnerving in her now-iconic unseeing gaze), it's far superior to most of the Susies on stage in regional productions. Susy may be blind, but she's smart and she's tough, and Gregory is as smart and as tough as they come. It's a pleasure to watch her organize her thoughts and her evidence enough to be able to direct the horrifying neighbor child, Gloria, in spying on the enemy and in organizing a clever offensive, with Gloria's help, against the men terrorizing her in her apartment.

But special kudos must go to Gloria, played primarily by Emily Reusswig (and on matiness by Eden King). Gloria is a difficult part - a child who aids in carrying an adult show with a large part, and who must transform, as her sympathies are aroused, from vicious little monster of the day to helpful and resourceful assistant, just as children often do in real life. Reusswig is perhaps the finest Gloria this reviewer has seen, wild and loose with temper tantrums and taunts early in the day, but composed and helpful when she realizes that the lady downstairs actually is in the middle of a crisis. It's important to the story that Gloria be understood as testy but not evil, and Reusswig navigates those waters more skillfully than most child actors. Her evident delight at being asked by an adult to help do something clearly dangerous is absolutely engaging, and shows, in Reusswig's portrayal, as a completely believable child's reaction to the situation.

Of course the story is improbable, and certain parts of it even more so. There's no denial that Knott, who also wrote DIAL M FOR MURDER, understood thriller as the dramatic equivalent of farce - it must move quickly so that the slightly absurd parts of it aren't analyzed too heavily. Berlanga has kept the show tight, and quickly paced, leading to the fight at the end of the second act that is always played on a blacked-out stage. That tightness is necessary in a play where all the action is concentrated at the end, so that the first half of the play, all entirely setting a scene, must feel as if it is moving.

The set, by Jason Bolen, is one of the best at Allenberry lately, and a perfect period piece down to the Philco refrigerator and the wringer-washer in the kitchen. The lighting is not quite as fine, as several red-lit scenes may be bothersome to audience eyes - fortunately, there are not many of them. The famous blackout scene at the end seems to provide enough time for the audience to recover from that.

At Allenberry Playhouse through November 9. For tickets, call 717-258-3211 or visit www.allenberry.com.

Photo courtesy of Allenberry Playhouse.

To post a comment, you must register and login.