March 2004
Double Indemnity - review
Director: Giles Croft
Designer: Mark Bailey
Choreographer + Composer/Sound Designer: Matthew
Bugg
Venue: Nottingham Playhouse
Dates: Friday, 12th March - Saturday, 3rd
April 2004
Tickets: £7 - £20.50
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| Double Indemnity |
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Double Indemnity has seduction, corruption and
murder... but no knockout punch.
Review by Carol Hinds
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Director,
Giles Croft, says that on reading the book he knew it was for him
because it had the right combination of pulp fiction, high theatricality,
sex and murder.
I've never read the book by James M Cain but I do know the famous
1944 film directed by Billy Wilder.
Do not go to the Nottingham Playhouse expecting to see Wilder's work
recreated on stage, this adaptation by David Joss Buckley is closer
to the book.
Walter Huff (Hywel Simons) leads an ordinary life as an everyday door-to-door
insurance salesman. Until the day he is snared by the feminine charms
of Phyllis Nirdlinger (Lucy Cohu) .
He is embroiled in a plot to murder her husband and cash in the policy
- the double indemnity will net the murderous duo a cool $50,000.
Walter's boss, Barton Keyes (Lou Hirsch) is an insurance investigator
who has seen through thousands of scams and his gut instincts tell
him that Mr Nirdlinger's so called 'accident' is really murder.
It's never to easy to do flashbacks on stage - and this is a play
where the plot and characters are developed through a mixture of flashbacks
and present day confessional and it works. As does the set - it's
worth a look just to see how a single back drop can become a car,
living room, an insurance office, the rear of a train carriage, the
beach and the deck of a boat.
With an American (Lou Hirsch) in their midst I was impressed by the
standard of American accents from the British actors, they were far
more credible than the sexual chemistry between Walter Huff (Hywel
Simons) and Phyllis Nirdlinger (Lucy Cohu). As partners in crime,
I had no problem with the pair, but as scheming lovers - for me there
just wasn't enough tension and passion to make me believe them.
In its hey-day pulp fiction was cheap and trashy but ultimately hard
hitting, there's nothing cheap or trashy about this production but
neither does it pack a knockout punch.
3/5
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