As far as I can remember about Frederick Knott’s thriller, Wait Until Dark, in its earlier, exciting play, film and TV versions, Jeffrey Hatcher’s new, 2013 changes to the script seem fairly minimal. The time is now 1944, not 1966; Mike is now a former Marine friend who served in Italy with the husband instead of just a former buddy; the hidden loot everyone is looking for is diamonds, not heroin, etc. But I can’t remember much of the original dialogue, and I’d like to think that the older versions made the characters more involving and entertaining.
In Geva’s season opening, despite the first-rate credentials of the director and cast, I found most of Act I fairly inert and the characters not particularly interesting or believable. Only Act II’s violent action endangering the blind leading lady in her apartment grabbed me. The problem is that I don’t know how much to fault the Hatcher rewrite, the direction, or the acting.
Brooke Parks, an accomplished actress who has played many leading classical repertory roles with major regional theaters, seems authentic but not very engaging as Susan, the blind woman trapped alone in her apartment with four seemingly helpful men visiting her after her husband leaves for work. Lauren Shaffel, an experienced stage, screen, and TV actress, creates a seemingly genuine young girl who lives upstairs and does some errands for Gloria, but her willful behavior is hard to take or believe until near the end of the play.
Remi Sandri, a Geva favorite, who has played all sorts of dramatic, comic, and musical leads absolutely superbly, here plays the totally unrewarding role of the husband who shows up blandly and briefly only in the first and last scenes. Ted Koch is quite effective as the frightening villain who first deliberately plays both a father and son appropriately suspiciously.
Peter Rini’s Mike is a character who evolves from appealing pretense to rueful hesitation in his villainy and seems generally effective throughout. And Craig Bockhorn, another gifted, very experienced actor, has the unfortunate assignment of playing Carlino, a criminal pretending to be a policeman, who really should seem to be suspicious and phony even from the beginning.
The physical production is nicely detailed but unremarkable. I do think that the set-up of the refrigerator is unfortunate. A big, brilliant light shines right at the audience when Susan opens it to hide something. The door should not be facing directly into the audience when Susan is disabling all the lights in the apartment: that diffuses the later surprise when its glare suddenly lets her attacker see her.
The play still boasts a good, rousing ending. But something has put a yawn in what used to be a lot of fun leading to the thrill.
