Storm Marie Baca in The Stranger
In her pre-show announcements for Saturday’s Black Box Theatre performance of The Stranger, Lora Adams, the show's director/designer and owner of the venue extraordinaire, mentioned that while Agatha Christie wrote this play in the 1930s, it hadn't been produced until fairly recently. (The Internet tells me it was first staged in 2019.) While I don’t know the real reasoning for the eight-decade lag – and I’m sure there is one – part of me wonders whether it’s because the first half of this 90-minute one-act is rather pointless.
While Doris (Avalon Willowbloom) and Mrs. Huggins (Jane Simonsen) are charming characters, the script lacks the usual polish and plot devices one typically expects from a Christie. In truth, because Willowbloom's and Simonsen's figures are so vital to the show’s opening few minutes, I was later stunned when it turned out that they're the most minor of characters and rather unnecessary to the plot as a whole. The actual story of The Stranger follows Enid (Storm Marie Baca) as she breaks her long engagement to Dick Lane (James Driscoll) in favor of the dashing Gerald Strange (Cole McFarren), and subsequently follows what becomes of all three afterward.
Performed as a radio play with a gorgeous, art-deco-themed recording studio set, Adams had her cast with scripts in hand, as you would expect for a radio show. This is not my first radio-play rodeo, but it was the first time I can remember it feeling like the cast was occasionally caught off-guard by where the script was taking them or what came next. It was, however, great fun to have the cast sitting in chairs in the studio reacting to – and even, at times, whispering with – those they were seated beside. Adams also clad her cast well. The art-deco ties for the gentlemen and lovely dresses on the ladies made the whole evening feel like a true blast from the past.
Rather than cast one person as foley operator (the person who creates all the fun sound effects), that role fell to whomever wasn’t currently speaking into one of the Doug Kutzli-created 1940s stand microphones. The Stranger's entire cast of six took turns opening the mini door, stirring coffee cups, and recreating every sound cue needed. It was a fantastic way to utilize those who weren’t speaking and, as previously noted, many characters appeared for a only short time, so giving them sound effects to produce was a great decision. Dee Canfield’s character Mrs. Birch, for instance, didn’t have anything to do for the show's entire first half, so it was nice that she was assigned creative things to do rather than just sit. The on-stage sound effects paired wonderfully with the sound design by fellow Reader reviewer Alexander Richardson.
The Stranger begins in London, and I appreciated that the cast spoke with British accents – kudos to them for a rather nice job presenting the vernacular. Simonsen, in particular, spoke with such soothing tones that I felt the need to close my eyes and take it all in as though I truly was listening on the radio. The joy of this radio play was such that it didn’t much matter what the characters looked like or how old they were. I rather doubt Driscoll and Baca would be cast opposite each other as a young, engaged couple in any other context, which would've been a shame, because the two worked beautifully together, especially toward the climax.
Meanwhile, from my perspective (and based on the crowd mutterings I overheard), it didn’t take long for the audience to figure out what was going on with Mr. Strange and that all wasn’t as it seemed. But I appreciated that nothing ever felt terribly sinister. Even when McFarren got extra-intense as his character began to show his true colors, I was never quite as on-edge as I initially anticipated from Christie's psychological thriller. (This, by the way, was a good thing, as I’m undeniably a dyed-in-the-wool scaredy cat!) But I didn’t see the major plot twist coming, which was also a welcome surprise.
I'm going to tread carefully here so as not to spoil anything: It seemed, to me at least, that in the last few minutes of The Stranger, everyone forgot they were in a recording studio, and suddenly, the show switched to traditional stage play. When one character ended up on the ground and another declared them dead, it seemed the opposite of what actors in a recording studio would actually do … especially since these actions took them further away from the microphones. Nevertheless, my entire time spent at The Stranger constituted a fun, throwback evening of Christie-radio-play goodness, with some surprise twists and turns, to boot. Thriller fans will not be disappointed, and even their wimpier friends will find delight here, as well.
The Stranger runs at the Black Box Theatre (1623 Fifth Avenue, Moline IL) through March 23, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)284-2350 and visiting TheBlackBoxTheatre.com.
