Die Presse

Murder à la Hitchcock: Telephone, Glasses and Key

„Dial ,M’ For Murder“ is a much-filmed play by Frederick Knott; however, the play still works on the stage, too. (…)

Vienna’s English Theatre resolved to mount a production of the three-act play this season and has scored a hit. In two brief hours, director Ken Alexander manages effectively to recreate the atmosphere of 1950’s London; in addition, he succeeds in delineating the characters discreetly and maintains the suspense right to the end. Much of the cast is made up of young British actors and, together, the cast succeeds in generating an intensity on the small stage (set in a chic 1950’s interior, complete with open bar, beige bakelite telephone and up-to-the-minute period radio). Thus, the audience is drawn so near to the heart of the action that every nuance has to be dead-right; the challenge is successfully met.

The play takes place in a flat in a good area of London. Sheila Wendice (Emily Stride, as cool as Grace Kelly) is entertaining her guest, the author Max Halliday (Oliver Tilney portrays him as being first glib and then excessive in his concern). The pair had had an affair before he accepted a job in New York. Sheila is nervous, as she is being blackmailed in a series of letters; both, however, remain convinced that her husband knows nothing about the affair. What’s more, she has no desire to warm the affair up again; now that her husband has ended his tennis career, the marriage seems to have improved. When Sheila’s husband bursts in, the three indulge in small talk. Tony Wendice (Chris Polick with an unperturbably smile throughout the show) sends the two of them off to the theatre on their own, on the pretext of having work to do. However, the moment they have left, he lets in a guest whom he plans to blackmail into performing a murder for him; Captain Lesgate (George Beach), finally agrees to the deal, having had a few drinks first. The question is, will the diabolical plan, relying on phone calls to establish alibis together with a stolen key, be successful? Inspector Hubbard, in his beige mac and with his sharp wits takes a close look at which scarves or stockings could have served as weapon and also what role a blood-smeared pair of scissors has played. Roger Ringrose presents us with an inspector of great aplomb.

It quickly becomes plain in this thriller who are the goodies and who the baddies; from that moment on, it is rather the paradox inherent in the plot – concerning the actual perpetrator of the crime and our tendency to regard the inspector as the unwelcome intruder – which ensures that the undertow of tension takes relentless hold of us. Above all, it is the actors who convey the lifestyle, the elegance and the snobbery prevalent in Great Britain of that time, when the country was more or less still a world empire and the „Queen of Crime“ could happily „get way with murder“!

Norbert Mayer
05.11.2014

Kurier

How to fail with a wicked plan for murder: high suspense in a British drawing-room.

On Tuesday, during the interval, star-pianist and movie-fan, Rudolf Buchbinder, was heard to remark, „One of the best Hitschcock films of all“. In fact „ Dial M for Murder“ (1954) will always remain overshadowed by the next movie he made, „Rear Window“. For the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, the filming of„Dial M for Murder“, starring the unforgettable Grace Kelly, was more of a casual job. Ken Alexander’s production – for the Josefsgasse 12 – of Frederick Knott’s suspense-laden and effective thriller about the eternal question – is there such a thing as the perfect murder? – is much more than that.

Right to the very end, the audience the audience is kept on its toes: Emily Stride, as Sheila, is the warm-hearted, emotional counterpart to her husband, an ex-tennis star, the cold, calculating egocentric, Tony Wendice, acted by Chris Polick. He is now planning to murder his wife from purely avaricious motives. When, however, things go wrong, it is the victim who ends up under suspicion; how Oliver Tilney, as author Max Halliday, sets out to clear the name of Sheila, the woman he loves, and to reveal the real culprit fully deserves to be considered first-class theatre.

Werner Rosenberger
06.11.2014

XTRA!

“Dial M for Murder” by Frederick Knott

The opening night proved a huge success with both audience and press. This thriller has its qualities, as Alfred Hitchcock discovered long ago when he set about filming the play, using the author’s film-script, and presented his audience with suspense at its best.

Nigel Hook’s set shows us the perfect British idyll within which the tension mounts from scene to scene, as befits the plot. Director Ken Alexander has chosen his cast of five ideally, it being Chris Polick who truly stands out; we already came to know his murderous skills when he played Leonard Vole, in last year’s production of „Witness for the Prosecution“. Emily Stride is his attractive wife, Oliver Tilney the handsome friend of the family. As Captain Lesgate, the man engaged to carry out the deed, George Beach ends up with a knife in his back, whilst Roger Ringrose, as Inspector Hubbard, ferrets out the true culprit. For anyone who loves English and loves thrillers, this production cannot be too highly recommended.

Robert Waloch
306/2014

Wiener Zeitung

A good old-fashioned murder.

It’ takes pluck to present a Hitchcock classic on the stage. All the more so in the case of „Dial M for Murder“ which made movie history when it first appeared in the 50s, starring Oscar-winners, Grace Kelley and Ray Milland; expectations are correspondingly high, then, when confronted with Frederick Knott’s play onstage. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, would seem to have been Vienna’s English Theatre’s motto for the production and the result is a hit.

Faced as we are these days with CSI and special commissions, it can come as a relief not to have to bother with DNS analyses or ultraviolet scans of the scene. Right at the start we discover whodunnit and how, when we encounter erstwhile tennis-ace, Tony Wendice (diabolical: Chris Polick), as he plans minutely how to deal with his wife, once and for all (Emily Stride, a blonde at once a bit highly strung as well as cool and unapproachable). An unsuspecting third party (George Beach as the hoodwinked Captain Lesgate) is to carry out the perfect murder. What works in theory, however, proves harder to put into practice. The marvellous set, a 1950’s London flat (Nigel Hook), provides the setting for the scene-by-scene mounting of the tension: will the culprit get away with the deed? Or will Inspector Hubbard (superb, Roger Ringrose) ensure the evildoer is called to account, using little more than his analytical powers and psychology. A cliffhanging delight!

Alexander U. Mathé
12.12.2014