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Much like its title character, Alice Won’t Die refused to give up the ghost. After losing its theater at the last minute, this brightly entertaining dark comedy popped up for a weekend run at the Producers’ Club in a production smooth enough that you wouldn’t guess there’d been a venue change.
Director Rosie Corr creatively staged Grace Tomblin Marca’s one-act on a minimal set, spinning out a story of murder, attempted murder, and the business of murder. The play is both a revenger’s tragedy and a pointed meditation on friendship, family, and even love. But Alice Won’t Die holds interest as much through its structure as its story, specifically the recounting of events from two disagreeing points of view. It’s not so much what happened, but how it happened, that matters on the gut level.
A Deadly Threesome
A screw-up gets a trio of killers-for-hire in trouble with a powerful client. The only solution is another murder, this one much closer to home. Alas, something goes awry there too. But just how did the event take place? We have to decide whose perspective to trust. (Neither convinced me entirely. We should all know by now how unreliable memory is.) In any event, the attack sets up Alice (a grippingly intense Julie Sandler) as a narrator back from the (supposedly) dead, intent on setting the record straight.
A couple of the scenes go on a bit longer than necessary, including a climactic confrontation that had me worried this was going to be one of those plays that had something good going but the playwright couldn’t figure out how to end it. But happily, we do get a satisfying conclusion. The pieces fit together, the dialogue convinces, and the staging was satisfyingly clever. (A café table with two plates on it, flipped on its side, makes a fine car grille). Sandler was a torrent of seething emotion. Zachary Speigel as Liam, the mini-syndicate’s business manager, was a picture of menace.
Sasha Rechler was less solidly present as Ramona, the actual “hitman” – visibly “acting” while the others, including Will Tway as her hapless brother Nick, crammed themselves tightly into their roles, making their characters edgy and dangerous. Fortunately, aside from brief sags during the overlong scenes, the pungent, true-to-life dialogue and crafty direction pulled us along much like a vividly imagined psychological novel does.
Here’s hoping this wiry dark comedy returns in a bigger production for a longer run.
