With this question, Jeffery Hatcher opens his adaptation of the 1950s classic play, “Dial M for Murder,” originally written by Frederick Knotts, and famously put to film by Alfred Hitchcock.
The character asking the question is Margot Wendice, the main protagonist, directing it at her paramour, Maxine Halliday.
The dialogue reveals their passionate affair which ended when Margot’s husband, Tony, decided to give up his traveling position for a settled life at home.
Within the first two scenes, Margot reveals her unhappiness away from Maxine, while Tony reveals his backstory as a failed novelist with expensive tastes marrying Margot for her money and using his aesthetic as a writer to have countless flings with admiring fans.
What drives the plot is that Tony, in fact, gave up the job to better plan his revenge on Margot, whom he discovered visiting Maxine.
Planning to direct her murder secondhand, Tony involves a shady figure, Lesgate, as his proxy, but the plan goes wrong and Margot kills him instead, though not before Lesgate gives away some hints about the mastermind.
The tension of the play relies on close-written dialogue. The first act focused on the killing, and the second act on the detection.
Though a lion’s share of the deductions are made by Maxine, the police are not left out completely, with Inspector Hubbard as a conventional but not totally obtuse foil to the usual amateur brilliance.
The play is a thriller, not just a murder mystery, as Maxine defines the two in a radio broadcast played during the fatal night of the crime. This is because the plot depends not on “Who killed Lord Whatsit in the library?,” but on “Whether the one who does gets away.”
This means that it is all a matter of verbal chess, with Tony improvising his way out of each situation, and Maxine closing in on the truth.
What sets this aside from a movie context is the way each action plays a part in building the scene. Because there are no cameras to shift the viewers attention, everything the characters do may or may not be vital to the plot.
For instance, after Maxine and Margot leave for a play, Tony starts busily changing little details about the room, removing a picture here, pulling out a suitcase there. This change in pace could be achieved simply by shifting the shot four or five times in a movie, but here everything depends on the actor delivering actions with energy.
On this point, as on any other in this production, nothing is lacking, with performances by Rebedah Novak as the lively author Maxine, and Ira Kramer as the devious Tony standing out especially.
Bri Houtman also stands out as Margot, the troubled centerpoint of the drama, though given fewer quips than her paramour, Maxine.
Inspector Hubbard, as played by Ken Stack, is unexpectedly commanding for an unassuming character lacking dramatic development, while Lesgate, played by Brad LaBree, is a good comic foil to the grandiose villain, Tony.
Costumes by Chez Cherry seem to stay within the 1950s era of the play, dodging the never-absent danger of anachronistic styles in plays, while the lighting by Madeline Reid is very good, especially during the climactic killing scene, when the special effects stimulate a thunderstorm.
Lastly, the blocking shows clear expertise from director Rebecca Bradshaw, with the actors all performing a sort of physical Chekov’s gun. Every motion is deliberate and means something about the character, as well as the plot.
One recurring action is a gesture Tony makes for Margot to be quiet, placing his finger on his lips so that he can sort out the problem to his advantage.
In a memorable subversion of the act, Margot places her finger on his lips at the play’s end, marking the change in power dynamic as Tony is unmasked, joining the many villains of fact and fiction to be mocked by their own gestures of superiority.
