Wait Until Dark

Examiner.com: Wait Until Dark

by Catey Sullivan, Examiner.com

Talk about a feat of stagecraft. For the final 15 or so minutes of Frederick Knott’s edge-of-your-seat thriller Wait Until Dark, the entire theater is plunged into pitch blackness. Even the “Exit” lights are snuffed, begging the question: If an actor emotes where nobody can see them, will anybody care?

The answer in the Court Theatre’s deliciously scarifying production is a resounding yes. The cast’s body language and facial expressions may be rendered momentarily meaningless, the set invisible and costuming irrelevant, but director Ron OJ Parson manages to create a world of nerve-jangling tension. Eventually, we do get the occasional spark of a lit match as the harrowing cat-and-mouse game between a sociopath predator and his blind prey plays out. But make no mistake: This is a world of dark shadows and darker intent. The dim glow of a kitchen appliance or the brief flare of a flame only serves to accentuate the sense of monsters lurking in murky corners. A master of gotcha moments, Parson delivers a thriller capable of unsettling even those with nerves of steel.

He’s working with terrific material, a tale wrapped around a primal fear as old as storytelling itself. That’s the plight of the woman alone, stalked by overwhelming, deadly and often unseen forces. From pre-Christian folklore to Saw XXV, few succeed in turning the trope into authentic terror. It’s far easier to crank out torture porn than it is to create a genuine spine-tingler of intelligence, suspense and three-dimensional characters. Knott - like the mighty Hitchcock – pulls it off.

Like the brilliant Halloween (the first one – not the endlessly exploitative lowest-common-denominator sequels), Knott puts a vulnerable woman at the mercy of the bogie man – upping the stakes by making the woman blind. Wait Until Dark (famously made into a 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin) centers on Susy Hendrix, whose unwitting possession of a heroin-stuffed doll makes her the target of a ruthless drug dealer and his thuggish underlings. Set entirely in the Hendrix apartment, the narrative is air-tight, a perfect noir that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the last gasp of its bloody conclusion.

Parson’s perfectly cast production draws the audience in immediately – and immediately throws it off balance by having petty grifters Talman (Aaron Todd Douglas) and Carlino (Norm Boucher) bumble about in an unlit apartment. You can’t quite see what these two crooks are up to – and that creates a fundamental mood of unease that Parson augments to powerful effect as the story unfolds. A grisly discovery in a locked closet moves the fear-o-meter needle to skin-prickling. And the scares just keep on coming.

Parson instills the smallest moments with utter creepiness: The shadow of a man in a fedora, appearing over the staircase while Susy chatters on the phone. The sudden alarm on Talman’s face when Susy off-handedly mentions that he’s wearing loafers. The grotesque snatch of tune from a broken music box.

As Talman and Carlino, Douglas and Boucher are both menacing and inherently empathetic. These are two schmoes who, like everybody else these days, are just trying to stay one step ahead of their debts . They may owe loan sharks rather than mortgage brokers, but their predicament is totally relatable. Their boss Mr. Roat is a different entity entirely.

John Hoogenakker makes the blood run cold with his depiction of a man with the soul of an ice pick.

Susy is, of course, the heart of the story, and in Emjoy Gavino, Parson has an endearing, resilient and charming heroine. Susy is a woman of both determination and an oh-so-human streak of something that flirts with laziness: She’s been blind for a year and a half, and she doesn’t mind being waited on when the story starts. There’s a journey as she develops the autonomy needed to foil a killer, and Emjoy has the audience rooting for her every step of the way. Also in Susy’s corner (eventually) is Gloria, a damaged little girl with her own demons to face. Erin Hernandez (who alternates with Molly Hernandez) was a believable mixture of bratty and damaged opening night, nicely capturing tween angst.

The whole thing plays out on Jack Magaw’s period-perfect set, a detailed snapshot of a 1967 domicile right down to the ashtrays.