“Accomplice” is more of a “what’s next” than a whodunit crime comedy.
And, ultimately, a so-what production.
Live Theatre has pulled its A-list actors in for this production, which is chock-full of one-liners, and more twists than a swarm of gnats.
The Rupert Holmes play starts out like a traditional English thriller: country house, poisoned drinks, a murder or two being plotted.
And just when you think you’ve caught on, the plot is turned on its side, and then on its side again. And again and again.
The premise is this: Four people gather in an isolated country home. A murder is planned, but who? There is betrayal, we think. Love affairs, possibly.
As you might guess, we can’t reveal much of the plot. We can’t even reveal the characters’ names (OK, they aren’t listed in the program and so many names were bandied about that it would make no sense if we did). The actors made us promise not to reveal surprises.
Actually, they kind of threatened us, which seems appropriate in a murder-centric play.
So let’s talk about the actors: Keith Wick, Emily Gates, Jodi Ajanovic and Stephen Frankenfield. They made sure we laughed — a lot. Ajanovic’s face is wonderfully animated, Frankenfield’s take as a playwright/director is a hoot, Wick is a master at milking a line, and no one does hysterics quite as well as Gates.
Director Rhonda Hallquist, who has a keen comedic sense, kept the play moving and infused the production with some very funny visual comedy.
The problem here is the play itself. The first act skips along at a quick pace, but the second just takes the air out of the production.
Holmes (“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”) seems to have completely indulged himself with this one — it’s as though he wrote one scene and thought, “wait, I want the story to go this way,” and instead of trimming the play, he just kept on adding scenes and twists.
But the Live Theatre actors jump in with abandon. And that makes for an often funny, if too long, night at the theater.
