10 Classic Mystery and Suspense Plays of the Modern Theatre

By: Richards, Stanley

Entertaining reading as it is exciting theatre, these plays, all produced pre-1965, serve up some thrilling suspense and often, comedic nervousness in 10 masterpieces of the theatrical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396067077
• ISBN13: 9780396067078
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Dodd Mead
• Length: 887 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A THEATRICAL KILLER

Entertaining reading as it is exciting theatre, these plays, all produced pre-1965, serve up some thrilling suspense and often, comedic nervousness in 10 masterpieces of the theatrical mystery/suspense genre. The biggest surprise is the cleverness, wit and well-hung terror in what should be a theatrical chestnut from 1935, "Night Must Fall". The older the plays of this genre get, the stuffier they sometimes are, but Brit playright Emlyn Williams ( Director and star of the first American production in 1936) has given us here a contemporary, even edgy suspense thriller with a great comedic flair, and what introduces us to what is probably the first modern day theatrical psycho in the character of 'Dan". What makes this play work is the lack of guess work in who the murderer must be, by the time the deadly deed comes, you have dismissed the obvious and settled your nerves on a host of others only to be deceived by a great playright's 'in your face' resolution. Even though the author has updated his play since it's premiere in 1935, it's still bewildering to hear a sarcastic house servant mutter a classic cliche when she tells an investigating inspector to "put that in your pipe and smoke it!". In William Archibald's "The Innocents", based on Henry James' classic novella, "The Turn of The Screw", a children's governess is obsessed to belief that her two young charges are possessed by ghosts and the sexual tension and imbalanced psychology of James' origninal work come full breathed to the stage. Agatha Christie's classic "Ten Little Indians" is the perfect prototype murder mystery with a group of people being knocked off one by one as they are stuck in a house on an island. The rather visciousness of Christie's original work is softened here, we end up with a surviving hero and heroine, and again, an unexpected modern day wit prevails. Joseph Hayes' theatrical version of his novel, "The Desperate Hours" finds a typical 1950s American family held hostage in their home by a group of killers, it's a straight-foreword, suspensful and melodramatic play, likewise Edward Chodorov's "Kind Lady", finds a middle-aged woman in her home also held hostage. They're all great plays, sometimes a little too deep in the stuffy cushions of old English parlors, but pour some tea, light the fire, and settle in for some supreme superficial entertainment. If you're fortunate enough to find the hardcover version of this 1973 compilation, it comes with glossy black and whites of the original stage productions.