REVIEW : Willful Paramour Holds Dated ‘Monique’ Together

For die-hard fans of classic thrillers, there was nothing like that chilling French movie “Diabolique” (1955), starring Simone Signoret and featuring that hair-raising bathtub scene with the water-soaked head and those bulging eyeballs.

As a murder plot gone awry, it was a sensation in U.S. art houses and later inspired a stage play, “Monique,” by Hollywood screenwriters Dorothy and Michael Blankfort, which is being revived at the Sierra Madre Playhouse.

The Playhouse, which just installed a glittering marquee at a reported cost of $5,000, is opening its 13th season with “Monique” and drawing wall-to-wall crowds.

But the suspense drama is pretty dated stuff, plodding in style and not nearly as successful as last year’s more distinguished oldies, such as “Morning’s At Seven,” “Golden Boy” and “The Pleasure of His Company.”

Unlike “Diabolique” the movie, “Monique” doesn’t work up to the same kind of scary payoff, although the sound of bathwater rushing offstage conjures up eerie memories, and a hovering shadow in the garden, against a huge white screen, conveys a measure of emotional terror.

We’re in a small country house outside Paris, and the gentleman of the manor (Jack Chansler) is plotting with his lover (Tamra Witten) to get rid of his wife (Jean Evans-Savage) so the two can run away together. But nothing is as it seems, to put it mildly.

The 10-member cast, predictably directed by Roxanne Barker, is led by the calculating Witten as the assured, willful and entitled paramour who has more options than you would expect. She holds the show together.

But the production’s sense of fun is undermined by Chansler as the weak-kneed husband, because he fails to charge the play with the requisite charm and abject terror and alarm. This pipe-puffing husband should be a bit of a dashing cad, not just merely a sniveling conspirator--a man who can kiss a dame like Monique and make her feel it, even if she is bloodless.

But as a naughty couple, they are not very interesting together. When they kiss, there’s no sexual chemistry, nothing to suggest any attraction whatsoever. Details like this can help juice up an otherwise by-the-numbers kind of show, which this certainly is.

Production values are fine, notably the several entrances and exits in the interior set design of David Schumacher and Barker.

Julie Kirkland is moonbeam-fevered as the girl next door, but too old to be playing an adolescent.

The show is a diversion of sorts for audiences who long for the old days of theater, although the twist in this instance has a decidedly contemporary edge. In any event, and in fact, playwrights stopped writing these parlor thrillers more than 30 years ago.

That doesn’t make it passe, just rusty.

“MONIQUE”

Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, Friday-Saturday 8 p.m., Feb. 7 Sunday matinee 2:30 p.m., Feb. 18 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 20. $7-$8. (818) 355-1478. Running time: 2 hours.