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Wait Until Dark
Knott’s 1966 thriller, in which a recently blinded woman, Susy Hendrix (Gavino), is harassed in her home by a trio of con men, holds up well in Parson’s stylish revival. The playwright was a meticulous plotter; if we allow for the generous suspension of disbelief that a suspense caper like this requires—why would a thug as ruthlessly amoral as the ringleader Roat (a terrifically chilly Hoogenakker) bother with such an elaborate ruse?—the story is relatively airtight.
What’s unexpected is how many laughs the production holds. Then again, maybe we’re looking for comedy to break the tension that’s established early on by Knott’s ingenious reverse-structure conceit, in which we know the criminals’ plot from the beginning and wait nervously for Susy to figure it out.
Parson’s color-blind casting causes some cognitive dissonance. It’s slightly odd that, in a play so tied to its period—the story’s reliance on the telephone precludes updating the setting—the central characters’ interracial marriage (Gavino is Asian-American; Terrance Watts, who plays husband Sam, is African-American) would go unremarked. In 1966, a sadistic creep like Roat doesn’t use that in his psychological torture games? But it’s a minor distraction, and worth it for granting us Gavino’s breakout performance. Her transformation from damsel in distress to worthy adversary is physically convincing and utterly winning; the final, pitch-black showdown between Gavino and Hoogenakker supplies edge-of-your-seat satisfaction.
