You’ll be dining at the crime scene as you savor the latest tasty delight from The 413 Project, Frederick Knott’s classic mystery-suspense thriller Dial “M” For Murder at Pasadena’s Madeline Garden.

Recently retired pro tennis player Tony Wendice (Kevin Scott Allen) and his young Grace Kelly-blonde wife Margot (Annabelle Borke) would appear at first glance to have a marriage as blissful as any two upscale Londoners could hope to present to the public eye, that is until a visit from American mystery novelist Max Halliday (Noah Khyle) reveals cracks in their outward marital bliss.

Even years after his adulterous affair with Margot, the torch Max carries for his London lover still blazes, and though Margot has burned most of Max’s passionate love letters, she did keep one of them secretly hidden till her handbag went missing and the letter inside it as well.

That’s when the blackmail notes started arriving.

Anyone who’s seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 movie adaptation of Knott’s 1952 Broadway smash will likely not mind any spoilers ahead. Dial “M” For Murder virgins, on the other hand, are advised skip the next few paragraphs.

It turns out to be none other than Tony himself who’s been “blackmailing” his unfaithful heiress wife as part of a perfect-murder plot so intricately conceived, crime novelist Max could have thought of it himself, a plan that will soon involve “Captain Lesgate” (Paul McCrillis), a Cambridge University schoolmate of Tony’s who has since embarked on a life of not-so-successful crime.

There’s just one hitch.

“In stories things turn out as the author plans them to,” replies Max when Margot asks whether he himself believes in “the perfect murder.” “In real life,” the mystery whiz goes on, “they don’t always.”

Truer words turn out never to have been spoken, and before long Police Inspector Hubbard (Richard Warren) has arrived to investigate a perfect murder gone wrong.

Like Knott’s 1960s stage-to-screen classic Wait Until Dark, Dial “M” For Murder combines fiendishly clever plotting with refreshing bits of humor and the acest of detectives outwitting the most cunning of killers.

As she did previously in The Importance Of Being Earnest and The Game’s Afoot (both Scenie winners for Outstanding Dinner Theater Experience), director Borke makes imaginative use of Madeline Garden’s main salon, which just happens to suit Knott’s script requirements to a T. (Think the living room of a modest English country estate with booths set up on two of its walls for audience members to enjoy a “High Tea Dinner” before the show.)

In addition, Borke scores bonus kudos for inserting a couple of ingenious flashback reenactments as well as for finding the cleverest of ways to dispose of the body during intermission.

She also proves Hitchcock Blonde perfection as the all-too-trusting Margot opposite Allen’s cunning charmer of a Tony, Khyle’s dashingly handsome American writer, McCrillis’s suitably shifty Lesgate, and Warren’s clever East Ender cop, with an uncredited Kyle DeCamp popping in briefly as police officer Thompson.

Costumes evoking the elegant 1950s, a nostalgia-inducing Hit Parade soundtrack, and requisite thriller effects are all top-notch, and the production manages to make the most of Madeline Garden’s limited lighting apparatus.

Last but not least, the tomato bisque, assorted tea sandwiches and savories, cream scone with clotted cream and jam, crème brûlée and more make for the most scrumptious of High Tea Dinners.

Dial “M” For Murder is produced by Julie Burlington. Armine Tadevosyan is stage manager and Kate Burlington is company manager. Summer Branham, James Darbyshire, DeCamp, and Justin Heller are understudies.

It’s precisely thrillers like Dial “M” For Murder that folks are referring to when they say, “They don’t write plays like that anymore,” and indeed the arrival of cell phones makes a contemporary adaptation pretty much out of the question.

Vintage doesn’t have to mean dated, however, as Dial “M” For Murder makes abundantly clear, and with Frederick Knott devising the most diabolically delicious of plots and The 413 Project delivering the entertainment goods every devilish step of the way, audiences need merely dial “M” for the most murderous of theatrical treats.

The 413 Project Theater at The Madeline Gardens, 1030 E Green St, Pasadena.
www.the413project.org

–Steven Stanley
November 1, 2019

Tags: Frederick Knott, Los Angeles Theater Review, The 413 Project Theater, The Madeline Gardens