Susan Granger’s review of “Kill Me Like You Mean It” (Fourth Street Theater: 2014-15 season)
Billed as a “film noir for the stage,” this silly Off-Off Broadway parody follows hard-boiled Detective Ben Farrell (Nathan Darrow) as he tries to prevent his own murder. If he looks familiar, Darrow is best known as FBI agent Edward Meechum on TV’s “House of Cards.”
Farrell’s convoluted quest begins when he reads a realistic and eerily specific description of his own impending murder in a popular pulp serial by writer Tommy Dickie (David Skeist). Not surprisingly, the life-imitates-art concept involves leggy femme fatales, laconic dialogue and spiritual corruption. The duplicitous dames are bodacious blonde Lydia Forsythe (Natalie Hegg) and sassy brunette Vivian Ballantine (Sarah Skeist).
Playwright Kiran Rikhye, director John Stancato and composer/multi-instrumentalist Sean Cronin encompass every detective cliché imaginable, including references to classic movies like “Laura” and “The Maltese Falcon.”
Cleverly, they directly include the audience, with limited “Director’s Cut” seating directly on the stage. As a result, the show’s conceit encompasses different point-of-view. No one can see everything, but everyone views something intriguing – with credit going to set designer Michael Minahan, lighting expert David Bengali, costumer Angela Harner and Ava Meyer’s props/graphics.
Beginning during the early 1940s, coinciding with the end of W.W.II, a new genre of American films emerged. These dark, melodramas dealt with issues of obsession, addiction and jealousy, delving into the dark, haunted mysteries of human nature. While their antecedents can be traced back to German Expressionism of the 1920s, they borrowed elements from the gangster, detective and mystery genres, combining them into a new cinematic form, known as film noir. Indeed, the darkness that characterized most scenes was a deliberate embracing of oppressive shadows, utilizing the claustrophobic effect of a lack of light.
This is the latest absurdist production of Stolen Chair, the innovative theatrical troupe that previously scored with “The Man Who Laughs.”
“Kill Me Like You Mean It” plays at the Fourth Street Theater, 83 East 4th Street, between Bowery and 2ns Avenue, through March 8. For more information, visit www.stolenchair.org.