Portland Phoenix | Inside the Head of the Criminal: Theater at Monmouth Dials "M" for Murder

There are really only five motives for committing murder, says American crime writer Max Halliday (Marshall Taylor Thurman): “Fear, jealousy, money, revenge, and to protect someone you love.” Max’s expertise becomes salient during a stay in London, around the attempted strangling of his former lover Margot Wendice (Kendren Spencer), wife of tennis star Tony Wendice (Jake Loewenthal). Pertinent clues include blackmail and love letters, a stocking, and a hidden key, in Dial “M” For Murder, the 1952 stage play on which the famed 1954 Hitchcock film was based. Sally Wood directs a deliciously bracing production, for the Theater at Monmouth.

Dial “M” is indeed a thriller writer’s thriller; the fun is not in speculating on whodunit — this we know pretty early on — but instead in the dramatic ironies happening onstage as various people propose and confabulate different versions of who, how, and why. Means of entrance and egress to Margot and Tony’s stylish London apartment are soon of great significance, which Meg Anderson’s set gamely highlights with three tall, freestanding doors — leading to the front hall, the bedroom, the garden — that are abstracted away from their walls, commanding the well-appointed space.