CULTURE | THEATER
Jessi Little stars as Susy in Interplayers’ Wait Until Dark. SARAH WURTZ PHOTOS
Dark Deeds
A new adaptation of the suspense-thriller Wait Until Dark ratchets the tension up a notch BY E.J. IANNELLI
B
umps and shuffling emanate from behind a darkened stage. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Flashes of lightning give the blinds on the rear wall a pulsating glow. A door a half-level up opens to reveal a large shadow backlit by the hallway beyond. The shadow descends the stairs and moves unhurriedly about the room as if indulging a passing curiosity. Only the faintest slivers and pinpricks of illumination hint at the room’s layout and any obstacles it might hold. Now the darkness acts as a handicap; but after a time, when the shadow wants to obscure itself from another, it will briefly become an asset. The fickle nature of darkness is the nub of Frederick Knott’s 1966 thriller Wait Until
Dark, currently enjoying a new lease on life in a fresh adaptation by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Interplayers is only the third theater to stage this still-evolving adaptation (directed here by Jack Phillips, who helmed the Civic throughout the ’90s), which has trimmed some of the original’s slack — not that it was enough to hamper earlier incarnations, given their impressive theatrical runs — and predated the action to the 1940s to accentuate its noir-ish feel. Jessi Little stars as Susy Hendrix, blinded in a car accident roughly one year before the play’s events begin. For her, the dark is a constant to which she’s still adapting. Her husband Sam (Damon Mentzer) is a photographer — hardly a random choice of profession, seeing as how it’s
Easter Buffet at Remington’s
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