Wait Until Dark

By Frederick Knott, Directed by Jamie Horton
Commonweal Theater, July 25, 2007

The Commonweal has inaugurated its new stage with a thriller that takes advantage of the increased staging and improved lighting, ironically, to better portray the dark. Frederick Knott’s tightly constructed story has breathtaking twists and turns of plot and metaphor. Light and dark metaphors become complex as, for example, the on stage photo darkroom turns film negatives into print positives. The Commonweal has meet the challenge of Knott’s play with convincing performances by the entire cast, with a particularly beautiful portrayal of the lead role by Commonweal veteran Adrienne Sweeney.

The play utilizes two thematic arcs. The first follows the sophisticated scam perpetrated on a young blind woman by three con men. Continuing with the light and dark metaphor, these three men begin the play in the light: they see the layout, and they have the advantage of knowing how the swindle will work on the trusting Susy Hendrix. As the play moves toward its climax—which as the title suggests, happens in the dark—the con men’s advantage diminishes and the physical danger increases.

Adrienne Sweeney is Susy Hendrix and Milton Papageorge plays Harry Roat, Jr. in Commonweal's Wait Until Dark.
(Photo: Commonweal)

Scott Dixon and David Hennessey play petty criminals who are coerced into taking on the “job.” They begin the play as men who think they know the score, yet their flawed displays of criminal bravado early in the play help explain why each has recently been to prison. Their transformation from petty criminals to sophisticated con men is a little harder to explain. The two pull off a complicated scheme by acting as characters with more sophistication than either seem to possess. For example, Dixon moves too easily from the rough thug of the opening scene to the middle-class professional his character portrays in the con. Aside from that small complaint, these two characters make the scam work, and the scam is fascinating to watch unfold. Dixon plays the “concerned friend” seamlessly, persuading Susy that he is there to help and protect her. Hennessey plays “bad cop” with conviction and with a bit of a hint of the petty criminal. While these two are serious about the job, they are not killers. Milton Papageorge is.

In the company conversation after the play, an audience member asked 12-year-old Katie Bowler (who plays the troubled upstairs neighbor Gloria, alternating performances with Addison Cross) if she wasn’t scared to be in this production. Bowler responded, “With all these really nice people [indicating the other actors], how can I be scared?” But the audience was still a bit scared of Papageorge—even out of character. He is the sophisticated criminal that Dixon and Hennessey’s characters imagine themselves: he is smart, calculating, and in control. Yet his cold-blooded ruthlessness rattles even these hardened criminals.

The second arc of the play follows Sweeney’s character Susy, who is on a metaphoric journey from dark to light. She has recently lost her sight, and is still re-learning how to interact with the world as a sightless person. Sweeney moves easily and unaffectedly about her apartment to the point where the audience can forget that she is blind, yet she doesn’t stop to pick up a note that has blown from the phone stand into her line of vision (a sighted character would impulsively and nonchalantly pick up the misplaced prop and return it to its place), and she runs into an out of place chair so hard that the audience winces in sympathy for the impact with her shins. Yet even with this competence, Susy still becomes easily frustrated with the out-of-place chair, the refrigerator door left ajar, and the “lost” wastebasket, and she is wary of the world outside of the apartment. During the course of the play, She grows in confidence, which causes the advantage to shift her way. By embracing “the dark” of her new world, she has, ironically, helped illuminate her desperate situation in the scam and gained the knowledge and confidence to enter the dark promised by the play’s title.

While having lost some of their early advantage to Susy, the con men are still the experts in the world of darkness, and Wait Until Dark makes the audience wait until the very end to find out who will prevail in the dark.

The Commonweal’s Wait Until Dark is a stunning work on many levels: story, character development, theme, action, suspense. It treads on territory usually reserved for suspense novels and movies. To see this type of thriller acted so convincingly by real people 15 or 20 feet away is very unusual, and very powerful. So powerful, the audience has to take a moment to unclench fists and relax tense legs before standing up. And yet it is not suspense for suspense sake. It’s not a simple story about bad guys picking on a blind woman and a little girl. It’s a story of empowerment and discovery—the white knuckles are an extra bonus.

Wait Until Dark plays in repertory with The Mystery of Irma Vep through October.

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre