Deadly Murder: A Thriller Too Hesitant to Surrender to the Dark

Vertigo Theatre is staging David Foley's mystery, deadly murder, from the 1st of February to the 2nd of March. Foley's mystery spans numerous genres and defies neat categorization. It has wry humor, black comedy, classic whodunnit plot conventions, and a macabre edge. It veers towards the noir at times, creating an environment replete with psychological subterfuge and sardonic humor. I cannot divulge the plot as that is the mainstay of any murder mystery but suffice it to say the play weaves a dark web of deception and intrigue. There is only one problem...the characters are strong...maybe too strong. This isn't a problem for the playwright, but it is for the performers. Harold Bloom (literary critic and writer) once remarked, there are more Hamlets than actors. The idea being that some characters are vitalic- too vitalic- existing to the point of superseding ordinary human representation. Hear me out, my point is not that David Foley is Shakespeare (though undoubtedly this is a good script- comparing playwrights across different epochs is generally a terrible idea anyway), but that some characters are overdetermined, they are difficult to fully embody because they are too introspectively alive, they are too aware and they are self-generating figures, ones that at times come close to breaking through the confines of a script. Why is this a problem in this production? Simply put, the actors (as intuitive as they are) are unable to represent that seething vitalism on stage. In other plays, this may not matter as much, in this production and playing this script, it does matter. It matters quite a lot. Since we take far too many liberties on this blog and there is no turning back, I will ascribe this deficiency to the Director's thematic focus on the notion of justice. I infer this from the notes on the program and the performative focus on those themes, those performative instances seem most emphatic and overdrawn, like they were designed to drive a point forward. I do not mind didactic theatre, or one that puts an accent on alterity, there is a robust tradition behind it, Paulo Freire, Bertolt Brecht, Augusto Boal, etc. The only problem is, in a play like this, such an ethic should be driven forward by the volatile and vitalic essence of the characters. Themes that are examined in abstraction from the existential power of the characters remain only that, themes. As endearing as the performers were, they were operating at a psychological level that seems disconnected from the call to action that the characters demanded. So, there are two problems here, vitalic characters that are hard enough to play as it is, and an ethic that constrains the performance rather than liberates it. The play comes across as a thought experiment- an orphan, never fully claimed by the actors or the creative vision. It lies somewhere out there in the noosphere, existing in a state of disembodiment rather than an incarnation. Camille is an infinitely complex character, but not in this production, the iridescent features of the character fall into a monochromatic bleaching, her sagacity, her innocence, trauma and world weariness are all presented through uniform performative cadence and pitch. This character is anything but uniform. The quicksilver essence of this character is lost to us in this production, and that is a damn shame, because this character is a vitalist through and through- defined by cognitive contradictions, primal instinct and a ferocious will to survive. In spite of the representation, I fell in love with the pragmatic self-preservation and cunning of Camille the character. One gets the impression that Camille is a human being who knows how to survive anywhere, a shapeshifter of circumstance, all too fluent in deception but never really coming across as inherently deceitful. Ted was portrayed closer to the élan of the script, he is all of us caught up in situations that outsize us, places where our agency is stripped to its core, and we find that whatever we have is simply outmatched by the enormity of our personal destruction. He is Camille's foil, where she is driven by almost feral-like energy to live and outsmart the circumstances of her ruination, he is unable to adapt to the shifting ground beneath his feet. Billy, like Camille, is an enigmatic character, an almost Nietzschean hybrid of animal guile and cognitive depth, he is more than a match for Camille, and this is where the production should get interesting. It doesn't, unless you start imposing 'if whats' (a recurring motif in the play) onto the performance, unless you are willing to dive into the characters at a theoretical level, and this is precisely what a play like this should not do. This is not the genre, and this is not the format for the audience to engage in intellectual reverse-engineering. A thriller should not need rescuing by theory, we must plunge into the abyss with these characters, it must asphyxiate us with its stakes instead of remaining a distant abstraction. Ultimately, this production does not allow us to love it- it remains too distant and too aloof from the seductions of its own darkness.

The play has the right architecture, full of powerful intellectual and instinctual components for an evocative experience. This though requires artistic immersion and a comfort for the creative vision to reside in the liminal space between survival and destruction. We do not see this, as a consequence the inner ferocity of the play is blunted by choices that dull its sharpest edges. This production only suggests tension, we never feel it in our bones. In fact, we feel nothing, nada, zilch. This production does not grip us by the throat, it gives us a gentle pat on our back, reassuring us, 'there, there, it's just a play'. This play was not written to be a balm. This production seems to forget that intent, and as a result, neuters its explosive potential.

Justice be damned, let the characters speak to us. Let their raw truths define whatever justice remains.

Good points - Alexandra Prichard was masterful with the lighting, providing perfect visual counterpoints to the psychological ambience on stage. Lauren Acheson created a set infused with mystery, one where the objects and the space become silent conspirators.

Final Rating - 4.5/10