Dead Certain
Dead Certain
By Marcus Lloyd
Directed by Laura Dewey
Starring Tabitha Rox and Logan Curran
Thriller Theatre presenting at Breakthrough Theatre
Winter Park, FL</strong>
Take notes, you’ll need them to get through the second act. I’ll start with the bad news; this is possibly Thriller Theatre’s last performance, maybe for a long time. They’re going out strong with this tight, engaging two person show. Elizabeth (Rox) is paralyzed from the waist down and rides around in a wheel chair named “Wanda.” Her condition came from a taxi cab crash years ago and she blames her favorite West End star Michael (Curran) who came out late and didn’t give her an autograph. The delay made her miss her train and have to take a cab, and while Michael is a jerk blaming him is a serious stretch of causal logic. Now Michael is washed up (although he still has an agent) and Elizabeth offers him “A Large Sum” to read her play. And this is where it gets weird both on stage and in the seats: it’s completely unclear if we are seeing a reading, a play about a reading, or a reading of a play about a reading of a play about…well, as Elizabeth announces under a thunder crash “I have special powers.”
Ms. Rox offers a genuinely creepy aristocrat as she stalks Michael with her wheel chair and ultra-precise diction and dialog. Mr. Curran is a convincing drink, in the second act is slurred speech and clumsily steps. He mixes bravado and desperation; he must need the money very badly as any sane person in his situation would have bailed somewhere mid-way through the first act. Lloyd’s script is a bit supernatural, it’s not plausible but with cast playing it straight it turns into an excellent creep fest with sympathetic players and a gripping ending. You’ll need to catch this quick, it’s one weekend only.
Thriller Theatre is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/events/406395182815578/
