Wait Until Dark

Sun-Times: Wait Until Dark

by Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

'Wait Until Dark,' a '60s hit, still can scare us
REVIEW | Court uses a canny mix of actors
March 16, 2009

Maybe it's just the born-and-bred New Yorker in me. But as I watched the Court Theatre production of "Wait Until Dark," Frederick Knott's popular psychological thriller from the '60s, I had to suppress the impulse to shout out a couple of basic rules about survival in that city.

First: Don't even think about leaving your doors unlocked for even a split second. Second: Don't ever depend on a single lock. And third: Never, never let any stranger, no matter how convincing or charming, step foot in your apartment. Of course these days, as terrorist and drug-smuggling paranoia is alive and well, you'd simply have to carry something (even a doll) given to you by a stranger at an airport who says someone across the border is waiting to give it to a sick child. But that's an entirely different matter.

So yes, there are holes in the complex, seemingly airtight tale spun by Knott, the British writer greatly admired by Alfred Hitchcock (who turned Knott's other drama, "Dial M for Murder," into an even more famous film). And the fact that the central character in "Wait Until Dark," Susy Hendrix (the petite and playfully sassy Emjoy Gavino) is a young woman who has been blind for only a year or so, and the suspension of disbelief only grows. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, there are some neat jolts to be had in this production, and the bursts of nervous laughter that erupted at Saturday's opening night performance was evidence that the fright-meter was registering.

Set in a Greenwich Village apartment, "Wait Until Dark" chronicles what happens when Susy's husband, Sam (Terrance Watts), a photographer often away on assignments, agrees to bring a doll across the Canadian border, unaware that it is filled with bags of heroin. The doll goes missing. Meanwhile, two thugs recently released from prison -- Mike Talman (Aaron Todd Douglas, whose innate warmth works especially well here) and Carlino (Norm Boucher) -- are "hired" by a vicious "boss," Harry Roat Jr. (an aptly icy John Hoogenakker), to retrieve it from the apartment where Susy is often alone, ideally without creating too much suspicion or mayhem. Of course all plans run amok, and as the lies and deceptions escalate, so does the fear factor, culminating in a black-out scene filled with surprises.

This is not the usual sort of play you might find at Court, but director Ron OJ Parson clearly feels it is "a classic" of its genre and one that sets up some difficult challenges for actors (he's right). And his use of a multi-ethnic (rather than the usual all-white) cast adds just the subtlest edge to several aspects of the play. (No accident that the Hendrix couple lives in the Village, the rare place their black-Asian marriage might have been acceptable at the time, or that blindness takes on many meanings.)

Gavino, a most skilled and charming slip of a girl, deftly manages to shift from Susy's initially blithe self-confidence into shrewd counter-insurgency mode as she refuses to become the classic female victim. She also makes you begin thinking as Susy does, with a heightened awareness of sounds and smells and space and the little strategies required for living blind.

As Gloria, Susy's smart and angry little 9-year-old neighbor, Molly Hernandez (who alternates with her sister Erin in the role), had some truly scene-stealing comic moments. And Jack Magaw's realistic set, Marc Stubblefield's superb lighting, Josh Horvath and Ray Nardelli's sound design and Matthew Hawkins' fight choreography all up the ante in this light-sensitive entertainment.

NOTE: A brief (obviously updated) reference to a computer was jarringly anachronistic in this play that features rotary phones.