Joseph Hayes’ The Desperate Hours may have won a Tony as the Best Play of 1955, but the 67-year-old suspense melodrama is showing its age these days with its stilted dialog and Father Knows Best-meets-Dragnet characters, and some questionable casting choices don’t help its 2022 revival at the Group Rep.

In synopsis, at least, Hayes’ play sounds promising.

 A trio of escaped convicts have taken refuge inside the home of an all-American family, holding parents and children hostage as the hoodlums await delivery of the cash they need to facilitate their escape from town.

Local police, meanwhile, attempt to locate the criminals in a manhunt that’s particularly personal for deputy sheriff Jesse Bard, in charge of the case, and considerably more challenging than it would be today without smart phones and the Internet to speed up the search.

Cast members Jackson Bethel, Van Boudreaux, Davino Buzzotta, Fox Carney, Katelyn Ann Clark, Joseph Eastburn, Lareen Faye, Lee Grober, Kat Kemmett, Mason Kennerly, Bruce Nehlsen, Duke Pierce, Steve Shaw, and Gina Yates work hard under Jules Aaron’s direction, but since Hayes’ characters are given dialog that sounds awkward and unnatural to contemporary ears, even Broadway’s most talented actors might find this a challenging assignment.

Take this brief exchange:

CINDY: Mother, how long have these animals been here?
GLENN: Spitfire, too. You watch out, redhead.

Or how about this threat:

DAN: If one of you touches us one of us again, I don’t know what I’ll do. Can’t you understand that, you half-baked squirt!

Or eleven-year-old Ralphie speaking like no child ever did, except on TV or in the movies:

RALPHIE: Mister … Did anybody ever tell you? You stink!

It doesn’t help either that certain characters have been cast decades older than they make sense being, and if you can imagine Thelma Ritter as a female FBI agent at a time when J. Edgar Hoover made certain there was not a single women on his force, you’ll have some idea why turning Harry Carson into “Harriet” was a misguided directorial choice.

Not that the movie version didn’t already make one major alternation to the stage original in assigning the role of ringleader Glenn Griffin, played on Broadway by a just-turned-30 Paul Newman, to Humphrey Bogart, nearly twice his age.

Somewhere between those two, Buzzotta’s walking timebomb has his effective if over-the-top moments, but I would have enjoyed seeing what Group Rep newcomer Pierce (who’d be right for just about any role Paul Newman played in the 1950s) could have done with the part.

 Margaret Staedler’s ingenious wood-framed set takes full advantage of every single inch of the Lonny Chapman Theatre stage to squeeze in an ample living room, two bedrooms, and a police department office, all of which Maria Kress has filled with period-accurate props to match costume designer Angela M. Eads’ spot-on collection of 1950s outfits.

Douglas Gabrielle’s lighting is effective too as is Shaw’s sound design, one which integrates themes from Gail Kubic’s movie score, only partially used in the 1955 film, and Marc Antonio Pritchett has choreographed some stage punches for when push comes to shove.

The Desperate Hours is produced for the Group Rep by Bill Fitzhugh. Raquel Brooks, Kress, and Staedler are assistants to the director. Paul Reid is stage manager. Nora Feldman is publicist.

With its creaky dialog and dated style, I’m not sure even the finest production could make The Desperate Hours work the way it apparently did on Broadway nearly seven decades ago. Though I wasn’t exactly desperate for the play to end, I was definitely relieved when its hit-and-miss two hours came to a close.

The Group Rep, Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood.
www.thegrouprep.com

–Steven Stanley
June 3, 2022
Photos: Doug Engalla

Tags: Joseph Hayes, Lonny Chapman Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Group Rep