Novato Theater Co Presents Mary Roberts Rinehart Mystery Thriller THE BAT Feb 6-Mar 1

Novato Theater Company Stages Classic Mystery Thriller, Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Bat," Feb. 6 - March 1.

$25 Adults, Seniors & Students $22, Members $19 - online ticketing at www.novatotheatercompany.org; call (415) 883-4498 for questions/information only. No credit cards accepted at the theater box office for walk ups, cash or checks only. Open Seating • Free Parking

It's mystery queen Rinehart at the height of her powers. Keeps you guessing to the end!

The Bat is worthy of Masterpiece Theater. Novato Theater Company presents Mary Roberts Rinehart's and Avery Hopwood's The Bat, February 6 - March 1 at the NTC Playhouse, 5420 Nave Drive in Novato. It is directed by award-winning director Clay David and produced by Sandi Rubay.

The Bat is up there in the attic...but who is this master criminal? Only Novato Theater Company knows. Photos by Wendell H. Wilson.

Mary Roberts Rinehart's and Avery Hopwood's play "The Bat" is a murder mystery thriller original set in 1927, but for this production it is 1954. A master criminal hindered by neither scruple nor fear has stolen over one million dollars and left at least six men dead. The police are helpless, the newspapers know nothing. Even the key figures of the city's underworld have no clue as to the identity of The Bat. But, as chance would have it, The Bat encounters the only person who can stop the interloper - adventurous seventy year-old matron Cornelia Van Gorder, last in a long line of New York society royalty.

Add to the mystery Cornelia's eccentric, doting assistant, her young niece accused of murder and an unknown person who is always one step ahead of the detective, this mystery thriller keeps the audience guessing to the final curtain.

Leslie Klor (Cornelia Van Gorder), Siobhan O'Brien (Willa), Marilyn Hughes (Elizabeth) in the Novato Theater Co. production of Rinehart and Hopwood's classic thriller, The Bat. Photos by Wendell H. Wilson.

Clay David (Director) David won the 2014 Theatre Bay Area TITAN Award winner for Excellence in Theatre, the Dean Goodman Best Director in San Francisco Bay, two time winner-Lee Hartgrave's FAME Best Play Award, and the BRAVO Award for Educational Excellence. He has served as theatre professor and lecturer at Loyola Marymount University, University of Connecticut, and Contra Costa College. He has performed and directed from Off-Broadway, national tours and regional theatre including The Blue Heron in NYC, The Jerry Rojo Environmental Theatre in CT, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Playhouse, The Autism Channel, and The New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Notes from the Director

Mary Roberts Rinehart's play "The Bat" is a murder mystery thriller that was originally set in 1927. I have chosen the style of Hollywood director Douglas Sirk's great period (1951-1954) which struck a responsive chord with audiences; among the best-remembered are "Magnificent Obsession" and "Imitation of Life". Sirk's style hinges on a highly developed sense of wit, employing subtle stylization. Extremely lavish and baroque, the colors of walls, cars, costumes and flowers harmonize into a constructed aesthetic unity.

The play originally had a cast of 7 men and three women. I have balanced the gender scale and have given each character a Hollywood archetype: Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Lana Turner, Judith Anderson, Mary Hicks and Rosalind Russell to name a few. With these artistic changes, we now have a lavish, fact paced, delicious mystery that wonderfully enfolds and is beautiful to watch. I want the audience to feel like they are in Master Coutleigh Fleming's drawing room at Cedarcrest Manor. When chasing the Bat to the attic, the cast then envelopes the audience, with candles, flashlights and pistols, not to mention mink coats and tuxedo jackets. The audience is in the attic and the environmental climax will keep audiences on the edge of their seats.

About The Bat and co-playwrights Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood

The Bat is a stage adaptation of master mystery novelist Rinehart's The Circular Staircase, written in collaboration with Avery Hopwood, the writer of popular Broadway comedies (The Gold Diggers, Getting Gertie's Garter) with whom Rinehart had collaborated before. The Bat introduced some new plot complexities into the original novel, especially a master criminal known as "The Bat." The Bat shows Rinehart at the height of her powers, and in fact is her greatest work. A work of great formal complexity, The Bat is one of the few mystery stage plays to have the dense plotting of a Golden Age detective novel. Moreover, the formal properties of the stage medium are completely interwoven with the mystery plot to form intricate, beautiful patterns of plot and staging of dazzling complexity. Rinehart's costumed character, The Bat is considered to be the inspiration for the character, "Batman."

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