Theater Review—

Town Players Season Opener May Be Predecessor To Contemporary Crime Stories, But Its Solid Story Is Given Justice At The Little Theatre

By Julie Stern

The Town Players of Newtown have opened their 2012 season by reviving a highly entertaining British thriller from the 1950s: Frederick Knott’s Dial M For Murder. Many of its elements have been repeated in movies and TV shows over the years, such as the conniving tennis player who hopes to inherit his wife’s fortune, the crime writer who envisions complicated scenarios of murder, and the bumbling, Columbo-like police inspector in a shabby raincoat, who always remembers, as he is leaving, that there is just one more thing he needs to ask…

But this play got there first, and while it is rather fanciful in its vision of how the British legal system operates — would they really allow a condemned woman to return home the day before she is to be hanged, just so the abovementioned inspector could set a trap for the real culprit —still it is sturdily constructed, and, as directed by Gene Golaszewski, fast paced and absorbing.

Gary L. Kline is Tony Wendice, the husband who married his wife for her money, and hires a ne’er-do-well cashiered army man to kill her. He has thought about this for a long time, and planned it carefully, making sure of his own iron-clad alibi: he is attending a dinner party in the company of his wife’s lover, the American crime writer, Max Halliday.

Unfortunately, Margot Wendice (played by Jillian Faye Liebman) manages to kill the hitman instead. After all, it’s always handy to have a pair of sharp scissors in your sewing basket in case you need to defend yourself. (I first saw this as a child in Kiss the Blood Off My Hands.) Tony therefore must take matters into his own hands and restack the evidence so that Margot is accused of premeditated murder.

Jeffry Bukowski does a nice turn as the sinister Captain Lesgate, lying perfectly still for the rest of the scene in which he gets dispatched, then drawing laughs from the audience as he hightails it offstage before the lights dim for intermission.

Matthew Grasso as Max is clearly much nicer and more devoted than Tony, and his experience as a crime writer serves him in good stead when he dopes out the details of the plot.

Longtime stage veteran Ron Malyszka is fine as the shambling police Inspector Hubbard, who has a steel trap mind beneath his timid exterior.

It’s not Law and Order or Inspector Morse, but if you enjoy shows like Sleuth, Death Trap or Gas Light, you should get a kick out of this one. Certainly the packed house did on the Friday night that we attended it.

(Performances continue weekends at The Little Theatre, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, until May 26.

See the Enjoy Calendar, in print and online, for performance, ticket and other details.)