AISLE SAY New York
Good stage thrillers are really
hard to come by, and seem to be
impossible since Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth
(though I'll allow leeway
for anyone who wants to challenge me
with Ira Levin's Deathtrap).
Shaffer set the bar anew for what we now commonly think of as "the
reversal," and right around that time, David S. Ward's screenplay for The Sting renovated
the "fake out" in caper terms, and whether they know it consciously or
not, writers of this genre have since been toiling in the shadow of
these two templates. Some TV and film have gradually found ways to hold
their own again, but stage thrillers have had a really rough go,
because they keep trying variations on the Which Configuration is the
"Real" Reality game; i.e. Who's really the madman (if anyone)? Who's
really dead (if anyone)? Has there really been a crime committed, or is
that yet to come? Characters tricking other characters. I can't tell
you about Sleuth's variations
without spoiling it (but the original film adaptation with Laurence
Olivier and Michael Caine [avoid, avoid, avoid the recent one with
Michael Caine in the opposite role and Jude Law] is a pretty good
rendering), but I can tell you the problem is that it's folly for a new
stage thriller to try playing the same game—take, for example Mindgame by
Anthony
Horowitz at the Soho
Theatre.
We're in an
exclusive hospital for the criminally
insane. A
bestselling true crime author (Lee Godart) wants to get the permission
of the hospital's director and chief physician (Keith Carradine) to
interview the institition's most notorious monster. As he tries to make
his case, an unlikely nurse in a pink wig and other fetishist indicia
(Kathleen McNenny) keeps making periodic appearances, and there seems
to be no security staff of any effectiveness or meaningful competence.
The problem here is, verisimilitude is in question from the start. So
you start jumping ahead to possible paradigm shifts. And there aren't
that many: Is the doctor perhaps the monster in disguise? Is the nurse
perhaps the real doctor? And what's the truth about the reporter? In
time, the play exhausts the possibilities in a fairly by-the-numbers
order, and anyone with a decent feel for structure will see the end
coming by intermission. And the end is really silly. When I think of
what Sleuth
(and come to
think of it, The Sting) did
differently that I can discuss,
it suddenly occurs to me, it's the one plot point that ISN'T a spoiler:
They both start
out sincerely. With real characters
wanting real
things. We never doubt the foundation. The games that follow never
violate the original characters' objectives. Reality doesn't shift, but
we're temporarily misdirected into thinking
it does. (It's precisely
the stage equivalent of magic; the
magician has to ground you
before he can fool you. Which makes you trust him even though he's
untrustworthy. Is this making sense?) Anyway, you never for a moment
believe what you're told in Mindgame,
so what may or may not be
real is moot.
And that said,
the production, directed by of all
people, Ken
Russell,
is a pretty cheesy one, and the cast are giving B-grade performances.
(Even the esteemed Mr. Carradine. He understands how to honor the
rhythms and tropes of his character with the "right" line readings, but
like the play, he never convinces you that he's actually inhabiting them.
But in that sense, he's just as much an unmoored victim of the play as
we are.
Because it isn't until the end that he gets to—briefly, briefly—play
the truth…
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