BWW Reviews: Arizona Theatre Company Revival of WAIT UNTIL DARK Is Riveting

No matter if you saw the original Broadway production or the classic film version of Wait Until Dark, the fact of the matter is that Arizona Theatre Company, in co-production with Geva Theatre Center, has mounted a show that stands on its own two feet as riveting and suspenseful drama.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Frederick Knott's original, the play, now set in 1944, spins a spine-chilling tale about a blind woman held hostage to an evil band of thieves seeking to recover a doll filled with gems.

In the hands of the ever-brilliant director David Ira Goldstein, this production is a cracker jack thriller. From the initial blackout, compounded by the eerie music box melody composed by Jonathan Snipes, to the final chilling fight for life, the texture of this play is an intricate weave of technical elements and acting proficiency. Vicki Smith's marvelous set, Don Darnutzer's evocative lighting, Marcia Dixcy Jory's costumes, and Brian Peterson's sound effects conspire to create an atmosphere and tone of gravity and peril.

Brooke Parks, as Susan, admirably conveys the tension between her character's vulnerability on the one hand and her struggle to assert her independence and self-reliance as a blind woman. As she is deprived of one sense, her acuity in other senses expands and serves her well in discerning what danger lurks behind the venetian blinds and shadows of her Greenwich Village basement apartment.

Lauren Schaffel is delightful as the 14 year old upstairs neighbor who shifts from impertinent and sassy visitor to Susan's daring helper.

As disguise and deception are critical to the flow of the play, one can only say so much about the men in the play ~ Craig Bockhorn, Ted Koch, Peter Rini, and Joseph Kremer ~ without revealing too much, except to say that each wears his mask well. In the case of Mr. Koch, whose Roat is conspicuously ill-intentioned from the play's onset, I had hoped he'd lean more to the sinister than the irritable and short-tempered side of his character ~ just to make Susan's danger all the more severe.

The Phoenix run of Wait Until Dark continues at the Herberger Theater Center until November 30th.

Photo credit to Tim Fuller