Reviewed by James
Karas
Rear Window is a
murder mystery that started as a short story by Cornell Woolrich titled It
Had to Be Murder first published in 1942. It was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock
for his famous 1954 movie starring the unforgettable Grace Kelly and James
Stewart.
Emily Dix, the Artistic Executive Director of Bygone Theatre has now
adapted the story and mostly the film for the stage. It is now playing at the Theatre
Passe Muraille, Toronto. She has taken liberties with both as is her right and
the result is not always a happy one.
The plot. Jeff (Tristan Claxton) is a photojournalist who is confined in
a wheelchair in his Manhattan apartment in the early 1950’s. His apartment has
a rear window from which Jeff can look into several apartments and in fact
follow what the residents are doing in some detail. He does so with
considerable enthusiasm and devotion of time. He may be uncharitably described as
a peeping tom or a voyeur but let’s say he was living in a different time. More
about this later.
He sees a young, pretty woman who hangs her undergarments to dry, dances
a lot and welcomes her friends. She is listed in the program as the Dancing
Girl played by Sarah Marchand. She does not say a word. A young couple, The
Newlyweds played by Casey Romanin and Kathleen Welch, is in another apartment.
They are all over each other but we don’t find out much more about them.
The couple that draws our attention is Mr. and Mrs. Thorwald. Jeff
witnesses some unusual activity in that apartment and becomes convinced that Mr.
Thorwald (Antonino Pruiti) has murdered Mrs. Thorwald (Elizabeth Rose Morriss).
In the meantime we have met Jeff’s girlfriend Lena (Kate McArthur) and
his co-worker at the paper Charlie (Alex Clay). Lena is a pretty, intelligent,
self-assured and a successful actress. She is deeply in love with Jeff and her
main goal in life is to get married to him. What is she doing with him? She
threatens to leave him and keeps coming back. Is another textbook example of
love is blind and women were so desperate to get married in the 1950’s that
they would settle for anything? I saw the performance on International Women’s
Day and my reaction may have been coloured by that.
Charles works for Jeff and he visits Jeff to offer his help. Charles is
diffident and anxious to help all while being abused by Jeff.
Dix as the writer and director and Tristan Claxton as the actor presents
Jeff as an angry, bored, rude, depressed and quite obnoxious person. He becomes
obsessed with his conviction that Mr. Thorwald murdered his wife and he acts in
such an irrational, offensive and idiotic manner that no one believes him.
He treats Lena and Charlie badly. What are his redeeming features? Does
he have any? Should Dix not toned down Jeff’s negative traits in the script and
lowered the level of his rants and given him some redeeming features? All I saw
was just a self-righteous, jerk who would not be able to get a woman on Dating
for Losers let alone collar a woman like Lena.
Dix has added a number of angles to the original story and the movie and
the suspense does build up to a punch of discovery at the end. But her take on
the characters detracts from the main plotline rather than enhancing it.
__________
Rear
Window by Emily Dix based on short story by Cornell Woolrich
, in a production by The Rear Window Collective supported by Bygone Theatre
will run until March 17, 2019 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario. www.bygonetheatre.com www.passemuraille.on.ca
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