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Theater Review: Peril in the Alps at North Coast Rep
Schein on, you crazy criminologist!
"Ca-COW!"
On the one hand, the fact that Steven Dietz’s second riff on Agatha Christie — the first was 2023’s — has been extended for a second time, such that it now runs through May 25, suggests that any further critical comment is unnecessary. The people have spoken: lightly comic, gently self-conscious takes on murder mysteries and the famous detectives who solve them are just the thing for a jolly night before the boards. As Dietz writes in the program, “The theatre can gift us with the chance to solve mysteries that are too maddeningly elusive in the real world.” And unlike the real world, or even any number of forays into the theatrical version, that happy chance is entirely without consequence. Despite the dead body — “Yes, there must always be a dead body,” notes eager ensemble at the outset — this is an entertainment akin to Sebastian’s conversation in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: “A little sphere of soapsuds drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then — phut! — vanished…” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) And speaking of rainbow light: the mood here is marvelously managed by color-coded lighting radiating from the rear; every bit helps when you have just six actors playing 29 roles and using little more than the two tables, two benches, and three chairs (plus several monogrammed bricks and a china cup and saucer) to take us from a London hat shop to the cozy offices of Hercule Poirot to the decidedly less cozy slopes of the Swiss Alps.
I say “little more,” but rest easy: this is a sequel of sorts, and is happy to recreate certain aspects of the original. So yes, there will be makeshift figurines to serve as visual aids when it comes time for all to be revealed. And that brings me to this paragraph’s answer to the preceding: on the other hand, it’s probably worth noting that while some sequels serve only as bloated echoes of the original, others improve the formula, polish the rough edges, and generally advance the cause. And Peril in the Alps falls into the latter category. Star Omri Schein is somehow at once more ridiculously mannered and more natural as the Belgian sleuth, stretching out his words like taffy without ever quite breaking their significance: “And yeeeeeeeet…” “A criiiiiiiiime!” “Or weeeeeere they?” (As before, his Poirot is very silly, but he plays him straight — a neat trick.) The story is meatier — or is that meta-ier? — as Poirot finds himself hampered by his own fame: “If I could be unseen, there is nothing I could not solve!” Perhaps more than hampered. And speaking of meta, the goings-on are all so polished and pretty that I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some joke I was missing in the discovery of a dead body that had floated to shore despite being tied to a tell-tale bag of bricks. A mystery, indeed!
Here's something you might be interested in.
Theater Review: Peril in the Alps at North Coast Rep
Schein on, you crazy criminologist!
Theater Review: Peril in the Alps at North Coast Rep
Schein on, you crazy criminologist!
"Ca-COW!"
On the one hand, the fact that Steven Dietz’s second riff on Agatha Christie — the first was 2023’s — has been extended for a second time, such that it now runs through May 25, suggests that any further critical comment is unnecessary. The people have spoken: lightly comic, gently self-conscious takes on murder mysteries and the famous detectives who solve them are just the thing for a jolly night before the boards. As Dietz writes in the program, “The theatre can gift us with the chance to solve mysteries that are too maddeningly elusive in the real world.” And unlike the real world, or even any number of forays into the theatrical version, that happy chance is entirely without consequence. Despite the dead body — “Yes, there must always be a dead body,” notes eager ensemble at the outset — this is an entertainment akin to Sebastian’s conversation in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: “A little sphere of soapsuds drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then — phut! — vanished…” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) And speaking of rainbow light: the mood here is marvelously managed by color-coded lighting radiating from the rear; every bit helps when you have just six actors playing 29 roles and using little more than the two tables, two benches, and three chairs (plus several monogrammed bricks and a china cup and saucer) to take us from a London hat shop to the cozy offices of Hercule Poirot to the decidedly less cozy slopes of the Swiss Alps.
I say “little more,” but rest easy: this is a sequel of sorts, and is happy to recreate certain aspects of the original. So yes, there will be makeshift figurines to serve as visual aids when it comes time for all to be revealed. And that brings me to this paragraph’s answer to the preceding: on the other hand, it’s probably worth noting that while some sequels serve only as bloated echoes of the original, others improve the formula, polish the rough edges, and generally advance the cause. And Peril in the Alps falls into the latter category. Star Omri Schein is somehow at once more ridiculously mannered and more natural as the Belgian sleuth, stretching out his words like taffy without ever quite breaking their significance: “And yeeeeeeeet…” “A criiiiiiiiime!” “Or weeeeeere they?” (As before, his Poirot is very silly, but he plays him straight — a neat trick.) The story is meatier — or is that meta-ier? — as Poirot finds himself hampered by his own fame: “If I could be unseen, there is nothing I could not solve!” Perhaps more than hampered. And speaking of meta, the goings-on are all so polished and pretty that I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some joke I was missing in the discovery of a dead body that had floated to shore despite being tied to a tell-tale bag of bricks. A mystery, indeed!
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