We support local theater and lately we've seen a few plays at the New Britain Rep: http://nbrep.org/ Last night we saw a production of a murder mystery called Perfect Crime that's still running Off Broadway in NYC. I checked the play's website to learn about its history: http://www.perfect-crime.com/ This show has been running since 1987 and my first question is why??
Following the plot was a challenge since the events are more confusing than mysterious. If you ask me or my wife to offer a plot summary, you're out of luck. This story about a celebrity psychologist/author who is accused of murdering her husband who appears to be still alive is so convoluted and improbable to the point of tiresome that we didn't care what happened when the play was over except to be glad it was over. Her character kept shifting back & forth from dictatorial predator to frightened victim to where you didn't know why. The police inspector sent to investigate the husband's death is unbelievable and more so as he falls for her. If he's supposed to be acting dumb like Peter Falk's Columbo to smoke out the guilty, he comes across as just plain dumb. All the pieces of this yawn fest come together at the end but accomplished in an unrealistic and unconvincing manner. I've seen better and mercifully shorter episode's of TV's Murder She Wrote and for free.
How this play received good reviews is the real mystery here. Years ago we've seen playwright Warren Manzi act in Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class at the Yale Rep in New Haven and possibly on Broadway as the lead in Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, that role will be confirmed when we locate the original theater program in the basement. As for this production, the cast & crew did their best and were given a round of perfunctory applause by the audience who appeared to be as befuddled and eager as us to leave. Let's just say this was a good production of a bad play. The only crime perpetrated here was on the paying audience.
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