THEATER REVIEW: This production is marked by excellent set design, technical effects and costumes. Now, if the cast can pick up the script and follow it more quickly
By: Stuart Duncan
Every community theater needs to drag out an Agatha Christie story once in a while. Towards Zero, currently at Playhouse 22, the home of the East Brunswick Players, has two things going for it. First, it is one of Dame Agatha’s best scripts, a taut little drama of intrigue among Britain’s upper crust. Second, it is staged so rarely, you are unlikely to know the solution.
We spend three acts (all the 1940s scripts had three acts) in the drawing room of Lady Tressilian at Gulf’s Point, Saltscreek, which is in Cornwall, near the water. It is September in the late 1940s.
There is a bit of a house party going on. Thomas Royde (Wayne Harris in a splittingly funny characterization of one of England’s old-fashioned fuddy-duddys) arrives just as the curtain parts. He has just returned to England after seven years, thereby becoming of the old school, but a new classroom. Matthew Treves, the family solicitor, is already on hand. So of course is Mary Aldin, Lady Tressilian’s constant nurse and companion. Treves is nicely played by Art Hickey; Mary, by newcomer Sara Peters.
Shortly, we will meet Nevile Strange, played by Jim Morgan, and the two Mrs. Stranges; Audrey, his ex, played by Colleen Cohan and Kay, his present, played by Michelle Russell. There seems to be no love lost between them. Nor, for that matter, between Lady Tressilian and Kay.
In any case, Kay comes with a boyfriend she has just picked up at a local club a few miles across the inlet. His name is Ted Latimer, played by John O’Brien. All of the participants are now in place for a murder, a doping, and perhaps, far worse.
By Act Two, Superintendent Battle, brought to life by Andros Thomson, who apparently has been on vacation in the area, and his sidekick, Inspector Benson-Leach, actor Peter Matseur, are on hand to guide the investigation. Director Bob Gargiullo has livened things up by allowing the audience to vote at the end of Act Two on whom they believe is the murderer. The results are posted in the lobby at the end of the show.
It is some measure of the quality of the cast that on opening night, the ballots were widely spread, but not a single person accurately listed the murderer. Those of us who had previously seen the show were banned from the vote.
At the same time, it must be noted that the performance was badly marred by frequent lapses in dialogue, hard stumbles, or misses or very late cues. Since pace is all-important in mysteries of this sort, the fine technical effects, thunder and lightning for example, were wasted.
The set design, by Jim Parks Sr., is quite wonderful and very much in the style of the era. So, too, are Annmarie Matseur’s costumes. Now, if everyone will just pick up the script and follow it more quickly, the show could really shine.
Towards Zero plays at Playhouse 22, 310 Dunham’s Corner Rd., in East Brunswick through March 24, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets costs $16. For more information call (732) 254-3939.
For directions to Playhouse 22, click here.