DIAL M FOR MURDER. To 1 March.
Glasgow
DIAL M FOR MURDER by Frederick Knott
Citizens Theatre To 1 March 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 22 February 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min Two intervals
TICKETS 0141 429 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 18 February
A production camped high up a glacial Mount Style.I prefer Knott's Wait Until Dark where the conflict is worked out in stark theatrical terms: a blind woman staves off the man intent on murdering her by creating darkness. Dial M - apart from the title losing some point in an age of all-number dialling codes - depends upon some niftily unconvincing police procedure and a last-minute act of re-interpreting evidence which we hear about in cluttered retrospect, never quite coming over with conviction.
Kenny Miller treats it as an exercise on style and cool. A huge sofa, dominated by the reverse side of an extensive drinks display, features centre-stage. As with the famous Daldry Inspector Calls we open outside the living-room where the action's to happen, seeing through the same huge rain-washed windows as Tony Wendice, timing his covert flash-photos of his wife with rolls of thunder.
He intends to kill her; why he's trying to photograph her first isn't clear. Except it makes for a stormy sensatiopn opening, and prepares for the first act curtain, when the windows slide back into place, placing us as garden-haunting voyeurs for the planned strangling.
If nothing else, this is memorable as a show that takes an interval during an attempted murder, returning us post-drink and chat to a continuation of Denis Agnew's violence.
The sleek black elegance of Miller's design creates a cold affluence; Stuart Jenkins' bold lighting gives the place an eery iciness during silent inter-scene moments, which focus onTony's arrangements for the next part in his plot.
Jenkins' lighting is a major feature of this production: sharp, sudden blackouts, strobing-lines of brightness at the stage-sides, a sudden glare in the audience's eyes dying out to reveal the turning-point of the police presence. And sudden large-scale shifts of focus: all have a disorienting, nervy impact.
It's matched by the stark, cold impact of the acting style. Miller can't do away with the mid-20th century setting. Dialling apart, the piece depends upon the death penalty being realistic (for a woman too). But he planes it down. There's minimal realistic details in characters' behaviour. Everyone acts purposively, without any sense of feeling or attempts at the interactive detail that define relationships.
It's most notable in Anne Marie Timoney as an inspector who's shot up through the ranks without apparently hitting a glass ceiling or acquiring any of the mannerisms of coughing, eyebrow-raising or face-scratching that career-progression seems inevitably to teach fictional detectives investigating British crime scenes.
First seen seated, a diminutive figure calmly dominating the huge Wendice sofa, in a confident black dress and eye-startling shoes that would have given a Chief Constable of the time heartburn, Timoney rattles off questions with no moment needed for thought. She does the same later from atop the steps leading down to the Wendice flat (a neat design touch this; it becomes a pit of conflict).
You might expect the Citizens' to handle the play this way (then again, you'd not expect them to touch Knott's commercial thrillers with a repertoire bargepole - though, there again it's just like them to stick their programming oar where you least expect).
Ms Timoney's rattle-along interrogations have a certain force, though not necessarily one belonging to any Force in the nation's police service. Her rapidity needs alertness in the audience, and cuts through time for mysterious shivers to sizzle down our spines.
But it's all carried out with stylish consistency, though the amplified, distorted sounds are a matter of taste. For me they made for style-overkill. One, at least, works splendidly: Andrea Hart's final retribution against the husband who plotted her hanging. It provides an aural shock matching the visual surprise of an earlier moment in Hitchcock's 3D film of Knott's knotty thriller.
Sheila Wendice: Andrea Hart
Tony Wendice: Stephen Scott
Max Halliday: Liam Brennan
Captain Lesgate: Stephen Cavanagh
Inspector Hubbard: Anne Marie Timoney
Constable: Tim Robinson
Director/Designer: Kenny Miller
Lighting: Stuart Jenkins
Violence: Denis Agnew
2003-02-19 13:35:51