The Closing Door

Perhaps "The Closing Door" is the right title for the new play at the Wilbur, because it does give some warning of its melodramatic nature. But "The Slowly Opening Door" would more accurately categorize this mystery drama.

Alexander Knox has written a play that lacks only a soaring bat flapping about the stage. Be it understood that there is nothing wrong in that. If a playwright can arrange to have unknown hands reach out from doors, a Big Ben-like clock strike off-stage at tense moments, and blood trickle over door sills,--if he can work all of these (and more, as in this case) into his script without causing his audience to titter at the overlarding, then hooray for him.

But before hooraying for playwright Knox, it must be pointed out that too often his "thrills" turn out to be fakes. The "murderer" ringing the doorbell turns out to be only a Western Union boy, etc. The audience feels not only a considerable letdown but also the embarrassing feeling of having been duped. However, the game soon starts all over again, and this time--you're sure--it's in earnest.

"The Closing Door," contains little humor, and what there is could easily be done away with. The dialogue doesn't seem very important, but serves the purposes of the plot well enough. The plot, by the way, concerns an unemployed man who has lost faith in himself and is hovering on the brink of insanity. His loving and loyal wife is trying to get him into an asylum for treatment when the play begins. The entire play covers only the next few hours.

Alexander Knox, in addition to having written the play, is co-starred in its along with Doris Nolan (who is also Mrs. Knox). Both are very talented actors, thought it seems that Miss Nolan gives the better performance. Of course, as the wise and kind wife, she has the more admirable part. Mr. Knox portrays the demented man as a fumbling, bewildered person rather than a maniacal killer. What in "The Closing Door" seems like underplaying by Mr. Knox, may be an authentic interpretation of a particular type of insanity, but it is not effective on the stage. Eva Condon, in the role of the Grandmother, also does a good acting job.

It is difficult these days for the theater to compete with the cinema in the realms of fantasy and mystery. "Angel Street" is the exception in recent years. "The Closing Door" has plenty of thrills and short-lived suspense, but as a play it is not altogether satisfying.