The Big Sleep

Synopsis

"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars ..." The four million dollars is General Sternwood, an ailing old man. He has two beautiful sexy daughters - one a high-living gambler, the other a fast-living rebel. The General is being blackmailed, and to stop the malicious threats hires Phillip Marlowe, a Private Eye with a dislike for guns but a liking for smart dangerous women. Marlowe is soon immersed in a world of deceit and double-cross. And then he stumbles across the first corpse ... "Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead."

Our Review:

28 October 2011

A wise-cracking journey to the dark side is how I would describe the world of crime writer Raymond Chandler. Many of his books became hit movies in the 1940s and it was intriguing to imagine how this master storyteller’s quintessentially American work could be transferred to the English stage. But with great theatrical ingenuity the team at the Mill at Sonning have indeed created a suitably chiaroscuro landscape where Los Angeles high and low society can collide.

Stepping into the big shoes of previous Phillip Marlowes, such as Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell, Simon Merrells more than holds his own. He has the quick talking, sexy, steel-nerved ‘shamus’ down to a t. Handsome, urbane, manly and just a bit naughty – he is rather irresistible to women and the two female protagonists Vivian and Carmen certainly think so.

They are the troublesome daughters of invalid millionaire General Sternwood, who hires Marlowe because one is being blackm...

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