Blind woman's bluff

Connoisseurs of old-fashioned theatrical thrills have to bide their time before getting full satisfaction from Frederick Knott's famous 1960s who-dun-what.

Of course there are early shocks and shudders. But just let them wait until the climactic third act. Their patience will be rewarded. Turn a blind eye to contrivances and relish the slow, seductive spiral of excitement, which reaches a peak of shudder-inducing suspense and holds you there as the balance of power tips dizzyingly from male predator to blind female prey and back, again and again. Tables keep turning in a fight to the death.

This contest between the forces of good and evil, played out in a Notting Hill basement flat between Peter Bowles's murderous Roat and Saskia Wickham's blind, young wife, Susy, is no ordinary contest.

The meticulously prepared finale achieves its singular atmosphere of theatrical tension because the stage is suddenly plunged in darkness, with Roat temporarily rendered Susy's blind equal. In her unequal battle to win the upper hand and wield a vicious knife in it the woman springs the trap she has prepared to save her life

Wait Until Dark, which starred Honor Blackman in London during 1966 and Audrey Hepburn on film in 1967, remains a trimmish period-piece, a thriller that wears its age well enough in Joe Harmston's suitably tense production. I cannot think of any other comparable play that is invested with real poignancy as well as shock-horror.

For the blind wife, played by Miss Wickham with expressions of suspicious bewilderment clouding her face, strains intellect and functioning senses to the full. Having gradually deduced she is being deceived and in high danger she forges a plan, with Bettrys Jones's schoolgirl from upstairs, to beat the crooks.

Knott, author of Dial M for Murder, plots Wait Until Dark with guile and ingenuity. Three villains, desperate to find a toy doll stuffed with heroin and mysteriously gone missing in Susy's flat, play a game of misinformation to convince Susy her husband is a murderer.

Peter Bowles makes a stupendous, creepy Roat, with his fastidious, gentlemanly airs. He turns deadly in lightning flashes, his tone all dulcet, disarming and tremulous like an ancient fogey. Miss Wickham's highly watchable Susy fails to scale the heights of terror. But Wait Until Dark still boasts real shock-appeal.

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Wait Until Dark