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Regional Reviews: St. Louis The Wasp Also see Richard's reviews of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and We Will Rock You
But you never know who's going to get stung till the very end. Heather (the delicious Ricki Franklin) is not based on Sleuth's playful whodunnit author Andrew Wyke. And Carla (the increasingly guarded Macia Noorman) is neither a travel agent nor a hairdresser, like Milo Tindle, depending on whether you first encountered him in the play or the 1972 film. Instead, she works for a chain of British supermarkets, while the occasionally stagey Heather is mostly employed with the problem of dealing with an unfaithful husband–and with her own painful memories of reuniting with Carla in the first place, 16 years after they went to school together (which suddenly reminds us of Frederick Knott's Dial M For Murder). The Wasp has its own internal thematic structures to make it feel freshly fatal, in three fast-paced scenes. The play made its stage debut in 2015 at the Hampstead Downstairs in London, and this is the St. Louis debut for both this play and its author. The final 30 minutes have similarities to William Mastrosimone's play Extremities. And there are, from the world of Sleuth, byzantine touches of obscure intellectual pursuits here and there on a quite lovely set designed by Rob Lippert, which looks at least twice as expensive as a typical set in a theater of this kind. The realism of the show's lighting comes from Kara Grimm-Denholm. And nothing succeeds like simplicity itself when it comes to the costumes supplied by Tracey Newcomb. The bottom line is, if you're a producer who loves Sleuth but are horrified by the the challenges posed by that script's dizzying set requirements, this may be the play for you. Not to be confused with Aristophanes' brilliant comedy The Wasps (422 B.C.), Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's increasingly tense thriller still boasts its own kind of gallows humor. And it's trimmed with the quietest sort of wit over the women's conflicting fertility issues and the now-and-then waggish attitudes struck by Ms. Franklin, in her murderous scheming, reminding us of Laurence Olivier in the first movie version of the Shaffer play. Fate is nearly a forgotten language in modern theatre, but Macia Noorman seems to watch it slithering through her life as Carla, under Mr. Ashton's direction. She and Heather had a troubled relationship in school but, withdrawn as she seems in the show's first scene, Carla begins to accept this particular scheme of Heather's, albeit warily at first. Large amounts of money are discussed, and the financially pressed woman's fear of getting caught in a capital offense prompts vigorous renegotiations. Her own troubled teenage years, fraught with violent images, are brought back again and again, like a devil's bargain she can't escape, in the play's terror-filled moments. And her behavior nearly a generation ago becomes a personal kind of fly paper in a "wronged woman's" scheme. The sense of danger and panic hits a boiling whistle about an hour in as accusations fly and even more troubled memories get dug up. You can feel yourself getting ready to bolt for the exit as the troubles swarm and as the last bits of plotting are locked into place, each more terrible than the one before. In the final minutes, inevitability becomes a kind of carte blanch for madness. The Wasp, produced by Albion Theatre, runs through June 28, 2026, at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit albiontheatrestl.org Cast (in order of appearance): Production Staff: |
