'Dial M for Murder' review

Simon Collins reviews Dial M for Murder, a psychological thriller by Frederick Knott, at the Richmond Theatre...

OUR VERDICT

Expand

Manuel Harlan

Most people will remember this old-fashioned mystery story from Alfred Hitchcock’s intense 1954 film version based on a screenplay also written by Frederick Knott.

Since then the play has been a perennial of the commercial theatre, largely riding on the coat-tails of Hitchcock’s repute, though it was a West End success during the 50s.

In this new production beginning its six-month national tour in Richmond the set-design, costumes and manners have been updated to the slick 1960s style of the Maida Vale middle-class.

The soundscape includes the Kinks, Loussier’s Bach, and psychedelia. However, this means that the cold, self-possession of that class in the 1950s with their hypocritical façade of formal manners masking immoral drives (generating much of the excitement in the original play and the film) are already dissolving with the swinging sixties just around the corner. 

What is gained in sixties style is a loss from fifties substance. When the police detective, Hubbard, arrives in his flashy three-quarter length coat sporting a gold chain around his neck he has the demeanour of a young Michael Caine. Perhaps the production team felt that the 1950s period is too remote.

The story is cerebral, without much action. You need to pay close attention as the details of a very complex blackmail/murder scheme are conversationally explained in the first act.

Fortune-hunter Tom Wendice, a retired professional tennis player, wants to dispatch his wealthy wife, Margot. To this end he blackmails an impoverished former acquaintance, Captain Lesgate, to commit the murder for him. Tom’s clever plan seems watertight – until it goes wrong.  Then the tables are turned against Wendice as Inspector Hubbard in Holmesian fashion brilliantly prises apart the logic of the case.

The characterisations throughout are subtle, the performances a pleasure to watch, though actors who appear so frequently on television and film should always be reminded to clarify their diction more on stage. 

As with all older plays, this production must cope with the whirlwind of change in modern society, each day erasing the conceivable past further. Here the audience needs to recollect an era before the rigid procedures of today’s crime enquiries in which forensics, CCTV, digital footprints, and bureaucracy have made bland the personalities and marginalised the potential of individualistic detectives.

There have been other developments too, notably in communications tech. There was a time before the constant use of mobile phones. All through this play a white rotary dial telephone sits on the coffee table centre-stage facing the audience like a menacing alien occasionally erupting with that old, familiar double-double ring – ring ring, ring ring - that must be answered. In those days a phone as such was suspenseful.

Margot is on the line while she is being killed. It should be a chilling moment. The silent caller, listening to her death, not pushing button A, is husband Tom in a phone booth.

But on the opening night in Richmond something went wrong with the murder, or rather the way it was acted.

The narrow borderline between horror and comedy was inadvertently crossed and the audience burst into laughter. She is gasping for life and they laugh. She vomits and it is funny. Presumably, this will be ironed out in subsequent performances, as will the curious error of Margot who has a lovely English voice referring to trousers as “pants.” 

Even if you have attended other versions or know the film this skilful production is worth seeing. The story’s characters are intriguing enough and its plot sufficiently complex to entertain as an enjoyable puzzle. 

Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, TW9 1QJ. Tickets from £13.00 (book here)

Dates: Tuesday14th January – Saturday18th January

Tuesday – Saturday 7.30 pm

Thursday and Saturday at 2.30pm