Jeffrey Hatcher has kept the 1950s time for Dial M for Murder but, somewhat daringly, since two main characters are revealed as lesbian, rather than traditional sexual lovers. Still, the basic plot is the same: a husband hires a man to kill his wife (for her money and due to her affair) but she kills him in self-defense. Then she, instead, is convicted of killing him. She’s to suffer the death penalty, but will that happen? The suspense ends by answering that.
In the appropriately designed, beautiful, almost all-white living room London flat of the Wendices, Margot answers a phone call from Tony. (He’s arranged to have petty criminal Lesgate enter, hide near the desk, and kill her when she goes to the phone there.) But, as he attacks, she reaches back to a nearby sewing basket, pulling out a scissors with which she’s able to stab him to death. (It’s the last to be seen of Michail Roberts’s earlier fine showing of Lesgate’s money-hunger and bad character.)
Because Brooke Turner has well established Margot as a person worthy of sympathy and Tony Carter’s Tony Wendice as a despicable one from the start, it is more than upsetting to find her arrested as a murderer instead of a would-be victim. Margot’s former lover Maxine Hadley (a role handled with finesse by Zia Lawrence) gets doubly involved in the case. That’s due to the affair and her superiority to Tony in the publishing business and her ability to plot.
Probably the most engaging role is that of Inspector Hubbard (played just that way by Mark Benninghoffen), who always seems to be trying to solve the murder one way but then surprises with another.
Complicating factors include a 5000 pound financial matter related to a love letter and who had or has a latch key to the Wendice apartment.
Celine Rosenthal manages to keep the action clear and all the performances consistent. Adaptor/author Jeffrey Hatcher extends his reputation for complicating original scripts by others.
At Asolo, this version of Dial M for Murder does a fine job of adapting the original play for contemporary audiences. But I don’t think anything by Hatcher ever equals the greatness of what Alfred Hitchcock has produced, though in the medium of cinema.
