Wait Until Dark

Synopsis

Thriller. Alone in her flat Susie is anxious - so much so that when a stranger turns up claiming to be a family friend she is glad of the company. Suddenly she finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation and her only hope is to solve the mystery of the missing doll.

Our Review:

16 October 2003

There's a tiny fringe company called Sound and Fury who are pioneering a technique of doing shows completely in the dark, like The Watery Part of the World seen at BAC earlier this year. This supposedly innovative corner of the fringe is a world apart from the apparently creaky old West End, but in fact thriller writer Frederick Knott got there first 37 years ago, with the climactic scene to Wait Until Dark played in darkness at the play's London opening at the Strand Theatre in 1966.

Though the play has since become a repertory staple, it has never returned to the West End in the 35 years since it closed after a two-year run. That's partly due to changing fashion - stage thrillers aren't the draw they used to be - but mainly, I suspect, owing the success of the subsequent film version that starred Audrey Hepburn that has rendered its surprises redundant.

There's a danger that a review could do the same, and I may have already done so by ment...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (64.164.8.84) - 24 October 2003:

Truly Godawful. Saskia Wickham seems to think being blind means walking limp, and Peter Bowles is an embarrassment as Roat -- the "big scream" moment is mis-staged (and thus, not a "big scream" moment at all) and the rest of the show makes a poor case for this once-sharp thriller....

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