Wait Until Dark at West Valley Arts

I think the play Wait Until Dark is the perfect show to stage in the round so I was very much looking forward to seeing it at the West Valley Performing Arts Center last night. Even though I have seen both the play and the movie starring Audrey Hepburn several times, I was still on the edge of my seat during this tension-filled production! Sam Hendrix (Armando Serrano Huerto) is given a strange doll by a woman on a train who is later murdered. He is unaware that it is filled with heroin and that Harry Roat (Joe Spear), a ruthless and psychotic criminal, will do anything to get it back so he brings it home to the Greenwich Village apartment he shares with his blind wife Susan (Collette Astle). Roat arranges for Sam to go out of town and stages an elaborate con in which his accomplices impersonate Mike Talman (Doug Kaufman), an old friend of Sam's, and Sgt. Carlino (Tyson Baker), a police officer, in order to to convince Susan to give them the doll. Susan eventually figures out that the three con men are not who they seem and, with the help of Gloria (Ruby Rose Kohler), her precocious young neighbor, she contrives to put out all of the lights and turns her blindness into an advantage during an epic showdown in the dark. I sometimes find the first act to be a bit tedious with a lot of convoluted exposition setting up the con but this production uses a flashback in the second act that is incredibly clever. At first I found it a bit confusing (especially the opening scene because the audience is dropped right in the middle of the action without knowing a lot of context) but, once I figured it out, I really liked this choice because it builds a lot more suspense. I also really liked the sound design for this particular production because the audience hears what is happening from Susan's perspective (this is especially true with footsteps, doors opening and closing, blinds opening and closing, and sounds outside on the street). The lighting design is also brilliant because it enhances the tension throughout the entire show, not just during the final sequence in the dark (which is riveting), by constantly manipulating what the audience can see and I have to admit that I practically jumped out of my seat during an especially fraught scene. The set design for the Hendrix apartment is very effective and the actors do a great job foreshadowing the areas that will become significant during the final sequence. Finally, Astle is very convincing as a blind woman (I was especially impressed when she crashed into pieces of furniture that had moved from their original spot) and Spear is incredibly menacing but my favorite performance was from Kohler because she is such a brat but you can see the vulnerability beneath her obnoxious behavior (this is a hard balance to strike, especially for such a young actor). I love it when I am surprised by a show I've seen several times before and I highly recommend this production (but act quickly because there are only two more performances). Go here for tickets.