How Could You Mrs. Dick? will transport you back to an era when a well-dressed femme fatale felt naked without her matching gloves, and that world-weary detective lurking in the shadows was incomplete without a fedora, brim snapped low.
This true-crime drama, written by Douglas Rodger, brings the lurid and ‘sinsational’ 1946/1947 murder trials of the beautiful, young, would-be socialite Evelyn Dick to the stage. Known variously as Evelyn Maclean and Evelyn White, she was charged with the highly publicized slaying of her husband John Dick, a somewhat haplessly unsophisticated driver for the Hamilton Street Railway and her infant son, whose remains were found entombed in a concrete-filled suitcase in the family attic.
If sold-out shows are any evidence of craftsmanship, then this “whodunnit with a difference” which originally made its debut nearly twenty-five years ago, has clearly lost none of its allure with Hamilton audiences.
The tragic twists and turns of this sordid tale are brought to us by veteran newspaperwoman from ‘The Big Smoke’, Iris Muirson, played with a certain libertine, world-wise flair by 2013 Hamilton Arts Awards nominee, Crystal Jonasson, and Gregory Cruikshank who brings a fresh-faced, gangly-of-limb humour to the role of Keith Edwards, a junior, local Hamilton reporter and blushing novelist seeking to make his mark with this, the ‘trial of the century’.
The well-crafted plot, directed by Brian Morton and produced by Brenda Ewing, unfolds inside a late-night newsroom, which with some repurposing of furniture and addition of small props, becomes alternatively the Barton Street jail, Evelyn Dick’s elegant, uptown apartment, the Maclean family home, a seedy bar and the docket of a courtroom.
The ample furnishings and props which over-fill the stage, a three-quarter thrust with audience members seated in front and to either side, may have been an impediment to allowing the actors to freely move about as those with the misfortune to be seated off the sides spent the majority of their time staring at the backs of the actor’s heads, struggling to see the overhead projections and trying to catch up on garbled dialogue.
Impossible to ignore though was Hamilton’s very own “Black Widow”, played with subtlety by newcomer to the stage, Catherine Janes. Evelyn Dick, with her mysteriously-obtained cache of ready money and her penchant for bestowing expensive gifts on her many male admirers, has been variously described as a grasping social schemer, a nymphomaniacal near-prostitute, an enigmatic beauty with the mind of a child and, as hinted at, the victim of incest at the hands of her drunken, amoral thief of a father, played convincingly by Brian Morton and ruthless manipulation by her overarching, greedy mother, brought to us with exceptional skill by Deb Dagenais.
As the mesmerizing backstory unfolds, the grisly details of the death of John Dick, brought to the stage with great energy as a besotted and unsophisticated country bumpkin by Chris Cracknell, are winnowed out of Mrs. Dick by Inspector Charles Wood, a hard-boiled OPP detective played with panache by Kevin Griffiths and Clarence Preston, the cynical, seen-it-all Hamilton Police Sargeant ably portrayed by veteran amateur theatre actor Phil Gauthier.
The action of the ‘Torso Murder’ trial moves seamlessly in and out of time as the play steps back to examine the life and times of Evelyn, her parents, her seduction of and marriage to John Dick as well as a series of police interviews. Originally sentenced to hang, she is acquitted on an appeal which launched the career of one of Canada’s premier barristers, JJ Robinette. However, Evelyn’s
luck did not hold and she was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her son.
How Could You Mrs. Dick? is a highly entertaining, fast-paced tale of intrigue, deception and treachery sure to please anyone with a taste for murder-most-foul ‘sinsational’ style.
You can attend the play on: Friday, May 3 @ 8:00p.m,
Saturday, May 4 @ 8:00p.m. Thursday May 9 @ 8:00p.m., Friday May 10, Saturday May 11, @ 8:00p.m. Matinee ~ Sunday, May 5 @ 2:00p.m. 2013
Tickets are $18.00 ($13.00 students/seniors (65+) discounts for Thursday and Sunday performances only). For ticket information or to make a reservation, please call 905-627-5266 or visit the website at www.dundaslittletheatre.com