Lucy
Komisar
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"Kill Me Like You Mean It" smartly spoofs film noir.
"Kill Me Like
You Mean It" A hokey funny spoof of film noir, the mood set by 1940s music, this play by the inventive Stolen Chair company mines every verbal and physical cliché in the book. And the ensemble, whose members have been together for a decade, do a superb job in bringing to life the characters, one of which is soon to be dead.
Private eye Ben Farrell (Nathan Darrow) has the mystery of his career to solve. (Think Sam Spade/ Humphrey Bogart) Crimes are happening after they are written about in a pulp mystery magazine, "Murder Monthly." When the publisher of the magazine, Lydia Forsythe (Natalie Hegg), hires him to find her most important writer, who has missed a meeting, she covers her desk with pie charts that show how important he is to circulation. Lydia Forsythe (Natalie Hegg) is a glamorous in a form fitting dress. Farrell takes the job. (Darrow is perfectly smooth and comically understated in the role.)
Meanwhile, a mysterious woman, Vivian Ballantine (Sarah Skeist), phones to ask him to come to see her. She hires him to find her brother. She is a femme fatale in a tight red dress. She is sultry, so is the music. She tells him, "I live for my jewelry and my gowns." He says, "I like knowing what makes you tack." She says, "You mean tick." Turns out her brother Tommy Dickie (David Skeist) is the mystery writer. Farrell finds him in a bathtub dressed in a red satin smoking jacket and black patent leather shoes. A tray across the tub holds Scotch. They walk around, stepping into and out of the bathtub. Dickie says have a seat. Farrell says I’ll stand, and he sits down.
But soon he discovers that the next story this crime raconteur is
telling has him, the detective, dead. A knock on the door becomes a drum tattoo. Can’t tell you how it ends, because even a shaggy dog mystery has secrets.
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