Playwright: adapted by Terry McCabe, from the novel by Dashiell Hammett. At: City Lit Theatre at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr. Phone: 773-293-3682; $25 Runs through: Oct. 11
Structurally, The Thin Man almost meets the definition of a "cozy"the detectives are private citizens, the murders occur offstage, and both sleuths and suspects occupy a small, isolated, and closely-knit community. But the community, in this case, is New York City's high society in 1932, and our snoops are a pair of moneyed West Coast idlers whose rare forays into useful activity are scheduled around martinis before breakfast, cocktail parties in the afternoon, speakeasies in the evening and bootleg scotch before bed.
This Christmas week, however, their indolent holiday is interrupted by an old acquaintance's spoiled daughter, fleeing her rich-but-troubled familycreepy True Crime-aficionado brother, gold-digging mother, the latter's current consort, and a long-estranged patriarch who mayor may nothave killed his secretary/mistress/blackmailer. After the introduction of a few more murders, guns, cops and shady underworld archetypes, a reluctant Nick Charles and his cheerfully sportive wife, Nora, have no recourse but to discover the source of these dirty doings, so that they can resume their vacation.
Audiences hoping to guess whodunit ahead of the hawkshaws are warned not to even tryplot was never a major concern of author Dashiell Hammett, and though Terry McCabe's adaptation for City Lit Theater folds a labyrinth of clues, revelations and double-crosses into a cool two hours, the twists and turns come so fast as to induce vertigo. Anyway, the hallmark of the "hard-boiled" detective story, pioneered by Hammett, is not restoration of the social order, but an atmospheric stroll through its secret, seedy, and frequently sordid underside, where everyone has a secret and no one is what they appear to be.
A narrative whose personnel are comprised almost wholly of liars and betrayers requires a number of "re-cap" speeches, in which our guides review who knows what, who suspects whom, and what was said when. If these are to be prevented from slowing the action, they must be delivered with speed and precision. Fortunately, the cast assembled by director Adrianne Cury prove themselves more than equal to the task. The wordplay on opening night may have succumbed to the occasional stumble, but a verbally adroit ensemble, led by Wm. Bullion as the smooth-talking shamus, never allowed the pace to lose momentum for an instant, sprinting through their rat-a-tat repartee with a nimble alacrity to keep us invested in the chase right up to the final disclosure.