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LIGHTNING REVIEW: Treadway shines in 'Dial M for Murder'

Scott Treadway as Wendice (right) and Michael MacCauley as Swann shine in ‘Dial M for Murder’ at the Flat Rock Playhouse.

Where would Miss Marple be if you handed her the murderer on a silver platter without her having to solve the case through meticulous attention to the smallest clues?

In Dial M for Murder playwright Frederick Knott turns the usual formula for a murder mystery on its head, letting the audience know from the start who to blame. The fun is watching the façade of homicidal husband Tony Wendice crumble as his perfect plan to murder his wife develops ever-larger cracks. When the final key turns and the door opens to expose him as the killer, his smile hides a shattered ego.

Scott Treadway, a 34-year veteran on the Playhouse, is superb as Wendice. Loose-limbed and casually refined, Treadway gives his character exquisite manners that almost obscure his reptilian nature. He is the fawning husband, the back-slapping man’s man and the good citizen just wanting to cooperate. But Treadway also gives Tony an oily sheen that becomes especially dark when turning the screws on his old college acquaintance Charles Swann, aka Lesgate, in order to persuade him to kill Tony’s wife Margot.

Michael MacCauley, another Playhouse regular, has one major scene as Swann and he makes the most of it. MacCauley manages to make an unsavory character sympathetic as the audience is caught up in his initial uneasiness. The uneasiness morphs into disgust that finally becomes resignation when he realizes the vice-like grip with which Wendice has him. When Swann picks up the money we know he is doomed.

Because Tony Wendice is such a snake, the relationship between Tony’s wife Margot and her American writer friend Max Halliday seems innocent by comparison. Their relationship is not explicitly spelled out, but it’s clear there is chemistry and a not-so-innocent history between them. Vivian Smith plays Margot effectively as a woman who keeps her feelings bottled up. Max (Will Repoley) just wants more than anything to be her corkscrew.

The opening scene of the play is underwhelming as Margot and Max sit together and discuss their relationship in terms almost as formal as the elegant furnishings in the room. Smith gives Margot the straight-shouldered posture of a dutiful wife trying to pretend she has all she wants and needs. Repoley, in his 14th Playhouse production, gives Max a reciprocal stiffness that unconvincingly hides his disappointment at having to play second banana in her life when he knows he is first in her heart. As the play progresses, it becomes apparent that the opening scene is intentionally stiff and bland to set a baseline for the relationship that allows the audience to track the growing passion between the two as events unfold.

It was fourteen years after Dial M for Murder was first produced that the detective series Columbo aired on TV with the same formula of revealing the identity of the murderer at the beginning followed by an hour of Peter Falk picking at the threads of the case until he had created a web from which the perpetrator could not escape. As Detective Hubbard, the Scotland Yard detective assigned to the case, Peter Thomasson decided to play his character in the manner of Peter Falk. He was kinetic in his movements with a good deal of hand waving and head scratching, addressing the men as “sir” and tenaciously hanging on until he had it all figured out. It is a much different style than the proper and precise way Hubbard was portrayed in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version. A case could probably be made that Columbo borrowed from Knott’s dramatic innovation, so Thomasson’s portrayal is a legitimate choice, and he did us the favor of giving only a hint of a Scottish accent without taking it too far. It was just hard not to think of Columbo as he played the role.

As mentioned, the staging is elegant and the formality and symmetry mirror perfectly the state of the Wendice marriage that is more about appearances than genuine love. The fireplace with “smoke” was a nice touch. The costuming was adequate, but Vivian Smith’s wig was distracting it was so unnatural. That should be an easy fix. All in all, Dial M for Murder is a strong performance by an ensemble cast that lives up to the reputation of the Flat Rock Playhouse.

In closing, there is an interesting aspect of Frederick Knott’s life as a playwright to consider. He wrote only three plays. In addition to Dial M for Murder there was Write Me a Murder and Wait Until Dark. On the strength of these three plays he lived a comfortable and contented life in Manhattan. When Knott died in 2002 at age 86 his obituary in the New York Times quoted his wife as saying, “He hated to write,” and “He wrote only for money.” Rarely does a purely mercenary effort shine so brightly.