I realized at the read through of Judson Theatre Company’s Murder on the Nile that I’ve produced and/or directed eight mystery/suspense plays over the past nine years (2015-24). The five I produced were at Judson Theatre Company: And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution, The Mousetrap, Gaslight, and Murder on the Nile. The three I directed were at Millbrook Playhouse: Dial ‘M’ for Murder, Wait Until Dark, and Deathtrap.
What’s so special about that? Well…it’s this odd dichotomy: regional and stock audiences are still glad to get a regular diet of these shows, though they’ve all but disappeared from Broadway, and no one’s writing new ones that get produced on a Broadway scale. Off the top of my head, the only two I can recall attending on Broadway in over two decades as a New Yorker are revivals of Night Must Fall (with Matthew Broderick) and Wait Until Dark (with Marisa Tomei and Quentin Tarentino). And that’s a shame, because they satisfy an audience like no other genre. Would a modern audience pay Broadway prices to see a thriller done properly?
When I’m in the director’s chair for one of these plays, I nearly always use the old maxim “the actor must know everything so the character can know nothing.” While one must always work from the inside —> out on the emotional aspect of a role, it’s very often worthwhile to take one good pass at the script of a mystery/suspense play from the outside —> in, to be sure the audience gets the rollercoaster ride the author intends. At what points in the script do these values occur?
—Mystery: literally, “whodunit”, or some other unknown piece of major information that turns the plot once revealed.
—Suspense: a quality of withholding and foreboding. Something’s about to happen…but when? A “haunted house” feeling.
—Suspicion: this is particular to a multiple-suspect whodunit. Did they do it? The character knows whether or not they committed the crime at hand; but does the author intend for the audience to suspect them (whether they did it or not) at any moment in the play? It’s the actor’s job to make sure the Red Herrings register but still ring true and make sense in the end.
—Tension: happens between characters, or can be the result of an external force like a ticking clock or being trapped, like the characters in And Then There Were None when they start to turn on each other.
—Surprise: Boo! A jump scare, a plot twist that comes quickly with no foreshadowing. The rapid unreeling of the quadruple twist at the end of Witness for the Prosecution is one of the most thrilling examples (though some of them are foreshadowed if you listen to the dialogue carefully). And Wait Until Dark has two very famous jump scares.
—Pursuit: Though more common in television, this quality happens onstage too, usually when it’s been made clear who the villain/murderer is and we watch the detective/hero hone in on their capture. This quality can also happen for the audience when they watch the detective/hero formulating their plan.
