FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Watch closely and learn a lot
Mystery theatre may just be the toughest genre for an actor
By Lori MontgomeryNight Watch
directed by Nikki Lundmark
starring Joe-Norman Shaw and Elinor Holt
Pleiades Theatre
til Dec. 14Performing in a murder mystery play is a little bit like being under a microscope, according to two local actors who are taking on the challenge at the Pleiades in Night Watch.
"Seemingly innocent things become guilty when watched by 240 eyes," says Elinor Holt, who plays one of the leads. "Shauna Baird (another cast member) said it really well. She said that an actor on stage in a murder mystery could suddenly think, 'Oh my God, did I leave my curling iron on at home? I think I did!' And the audience will be watching that and going, 'What's she thinking? She did it!'"
Holt plays Elaine Wheeler, a rich heiress who believes she has seen a dead body through the window of a building across the street from her condo.
"It's kind of a psychological thriller," Holt explains. "Her past is filled with mental instability, so you don't know if she even saw (the body), and if so, did someone set her up? Are they trying to make her crazy?"
Joe-Norman Shaw plays her husband, a man with a murky past who may or may not have married her for money. Shaw agrees that the task of the actor in a mystery is not an easy one.
"It's more difficult than I realized, in terms of knowing how far to go with guilt or innocence, and where to lay the clues," he says. "You want red herrings, but you want the right red herrings, so the audience doesn't get it until the end."
As opposed to any other play, where the object is to reveal a character, this genre requires a certain amount of obfuscation.
"You have to create a truthful journey for your character, as you would in any play, without giving anything away, and you don't usually have to worry about that," Shaw says. Holt agrees.
"Normally, you pursue your objective, and everything informs that - 'I want... whatever,'" she explains. "If you're the murderer, it's 'I want so-and-so dead.' So you're still playing your objective, but if you do it that obviously, then the audience knows right off the bat and they won't be back after intermission."
Both Holt and Shaw say that the difficult task set before the actors was made easier in this production by the collaborative approach of director Nikki Lundmark.
"She likes you to bring in lots of ideas and she works with what you bring in," Shaw says, "as opposed to enforcing the will (of the director), which is what bad directors tend to do, in my opinion. They don't trust what the actors find organically, through the process."
"Working with Nikki is great in terms of being directed by someone who is a peer," Holt adds. "There's much more of a possibility for open dialogue. There's a lot of trust, so the actors are free to make big leaps if they have to."
One leap that Holt says was initially difficult for the actors was updating characters that were conceived in the '60s, in an era when Liz Taylor was the role model for leading ladies.
"They had a fascination with angst-filled women," Holt says, "and it was acceptable to watch a woman freak out for two hours. In the '90s, it's like, 'Oh please, take some Prozac.' We don't have as much patience for it because we expect Sigourney Weaver to show up and kill the queen alien, not scream about it for two hours."
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