“Wait Until Dark”: Still Scary

Through July 9 at the Dorset Theatre Festival

Wait Until Dark at the Dorset Theatre Festival promises that this “white knuckle thriller” will make you want to sleep with the lights on. It will. But first you have to be there, ensconced in the actual (and at times total black-out) darkness of the theater, along with Susan, the blind protagonist who is trying to make sense of who is there and what is happening in her Greenwich Village apartment.

Few who saw the 1967 movie of the same name starring Audrey Hepburn have forgotten the terror it evoked. The original work was actually a play by Frederick Knott that premiered on Broadway in 1966 and garnered a Tony nomination for a young Lee Remick, and saw a Broadway debut for Robert Duvall as bad guy Harry Roat, Jr. A new adaption of the play by Jeffrey Hatcher appeared in 2013. It is this newer version that is on stage at the Playhouse, moved back in time to the 1940s, shortened, with fewer actors. It is still plenty scary.

The story begins in the New York City basement apartment of Susan and Sam Hendrix. A seemingly random occurrence involving a doll launches Susan and Sam into a merciless con game, where identities are never certain, creeping doubts do turn creepy, and Susan finds herself alone, desperately trying to save her own life.

Sara Haider as Susan is pitch-perfect, portraying our heroine as both vulnerable and courageous. And unlike some other damsels-in-distress, she’s capable and clever. And with just a ten-day rehearsal, Haider appears to have mastered the physicality of moving across the set as a blind person. Manu Kumasi, Sam’s old army buddy Mike, projects sincere nice-guy vibes. Michael Barra as Carlino is convincing as a worn cop of ill-repute. Sam, a relatively smaller part since his absence helps to set up Susan’s aloneness, is played by Eric Gilde as a supportive if slightly overbearing newlywed husband. Acadia Colan is naughty, childishly goofy and endearing as Gloria, an upstairs neighbor kid who needs attention. It won’t give too much away if I say that Keith D. Gallagher as Roat really will cause you to sleep with the lights on for at least the next week, or longer.

Jackson Gay returned to the Dorset Theatre Festival to direct this play. Coincidentally, she also directed Slow Food, the last play there in 2019 before the Playhouse closed its doors due to the pandemic. Wait Until Dark is the opening production of this much-celebrated season, bringing live theatre back to Dorset after two years of a mostly empty stage.

Wait Until Dark runs through July 9 at the Dorset Playhouse in Dorset, Vermont. Click here for further information, tickets, and to find out what else is in store for the Festival’s summer season.

(Photos courtesy of the Dorset Theatre Festival)

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Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.