Review: DOUBLE INFEMNITY, The Vaults

In 1960s Los Angeles, traffic police officer Effie-Lou (Katrina Foster) is looking for her PI friend Jo after she went missing. As Effie-Lou investigates Jo's disappearance, she falls into a world of murder and sex trafficking, coming to terms with her past as a prostitute.

Written by Naomi Westerman, Catherine O'Shea and Jennifer Cerys, Double Infemnity becomes, unfortunately, too much of a pastiche by the end.

The all-female creative team certainly pays homage to the crime noir genre, with Foster dressed to the nines, her outfit complete with hat and trench coat worthy of the best detective.

Director Adriana Sanford and the writers succeed in having the actress play her character as a woman, instead of merely gender-swapping what's traditionally a male role in this genre. However, even though she looks the part, she doesn't always feel it, nor project it.

Effie-Lou's mentions of periods, cramps and her own womanhood are appreciated and fresh at the beginning, but they turn stale really quickly with repetitions. A professed feminist, she's still at the mercy of men (mainly her colleagues who give her their coffee orders), failing to be groundbreaking.

Her monologue is interspersed by voiceovers tied in by oddly amusing photos projected on the wall behind Foster: her partner is Brad Pitt in various past roles, her former pimp is Danny DeVito's Penguin. This works at times, but it has the tendency to become merely a means of getting the plot moving.

The clever and engaging parts of the script are sadly overshadowed by clichéd lines that forcefully try to make a progressive statement. This creates a vicious circle of slow-paced humour and sour plotlines the show doesn't recover from .

The play displays plenty of interesting ideas, and is certainly creative in its concept. Even though it recalls noir's cynicism, it could do with more expressiveness in its delivery. However, it shows that it's possible to gender-swap the iconic genre and define the main character by her femininity.

"Having a vagina doesn't make you a feminist and it sure doesn't make you a victim" she muses. Regrettably, Double Infemnity is only feminist in its execution, but not in its content. Female theatre companies Little but Fierce and Paperclip Theatre have a bright future ahead, but should stray from clichés.

Double Infemnity runs at The Vaults until 4 February.

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