Frederick Knott died at the end of last year, leaving two imperishable thriller titles, Dial M For Murder (1952) and Wait Until Dark (1966).
How imperishable the thrillers themselves are, I am not
so sure. Wait Until Dark, revived by Bill Kenwright and directed by Joe Harmston, is the better of the two, but it has a streak of crass tastelessness which is worrying.
You could, for instance, say that Peter Bowles plays a blinder - were it not for the fact that the heroine has lost her eyesight in a car accident and spends most of the evening stumbling around the stage.
Bowles is one of three shady, not very interesting crooks stalking the blind girl, Susy Henderson, who leads them a merry dance in a Notting Hill basement flat in the mid 1960s.
As Susy - originally Honor Blackman in London, Audrey Hepburn in the movie - is played by golden-haired Saskia Wickham, you might convincingly conclude that the blonde is leading the bland.
Noel Coward advised actors to speak their lines and not bump into the furniture, so Miss Wickham at least gets it half right.
Susy has been landed with a doll stuffed with heroin, unwittingly imported by her husband from Amsterdam.
Bowles, full of smarmy guile and sinister intent, comes and goes in various guises. His accomplices are Gary Mavers (Dr Attwood in Pe a k Practice) and Tony Scannell (Ted Roach in The Bill).
Mr Scannell comes in from the pouring rain with two large damp patches on his raincoat shoulders, patches which magically evaporate even though he, too, comes and goes, and it never stops raining.
This delightful Coarse Theatre touch kept me chuckling until the terrifying black-outs and reversals in the last act.
Miss Wickham is a bit monotonously eager, but Bowles is superb, tightening his voice to a dusty croak the nastier he turns and looming larger and more menacing with every entrance.
Wait Until Dark
