"...not just another romantic, mystery thriller"

August 17, 2006 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

The plot of "Double Double" is perhaps one of the best kept secrets in recent theatre history.

The play is co-authored by Rick Elise (Jersey Boys Tony Award) and Roger Rees who in 1988 played the male lead in the West End London opening. Since that time, it has been produced (in translation) in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Japan, and Russia.

Matt Letscher and Jennifer Van Dyck.
Photo by Joan Marcus

And despite all this and the promotion for the current production, audiences are amazed at the double-double (multiply that by ten) plot twists and the fantastic ending. Because no matter where one thinks the plot is going, it swirls off in a new direction.

Don't let anyone who has seen it tell you how it ends; all you should know before you go is this:
The action of this romantic mystery thriller takes place in the most fantastic set yet to be presented in the new theatre. The two-story apartment of Phillipa James spans the stage with a great winding staircase opening onto bedrooms on the second level. The dark painted walls are decorated with fantastic (and costly) African art. Though a towering upstage window one sees (mistily) the church tower in Connaught Square in London. (Neil Patel designed the sets)

And into this apartment on a Sunday evening Phillipa James brings a vagrant she has met on the embankment. She has an agenda. He looks like her recently deceased husband and pretending to be that husband for a few days could be very lucrative for both of them.

But in the five scenes of the two act play, a week elapses and layers and layers unfold, double and triple. And just when you think you know the score, you find out you don't.

Phillipa (played by Jennifer Van Dyke, seen recently this summer at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in "Coastal Disturbances") is as slippery as her slinky red dress, and beneath it, as vulnerable. She is duplicitious, wily, commanding, inventive (it is amazing what the woman can do with a newspaper!) and a whirlwind of activity. Van Dyke is compelling in all these moods, although at times her whirlwind delivery makes one miss a laugh line, and they are many in this play of whirlwind surprises.

The vagabond Duncan McFee (Matt Letscher) is much more intricate than the man he at first seems to be; he is a man with a past and an agenda of his own. He is brilliantly deceptive, witheringly funny, employs several accents and is more agile than any actor has a right to be. Each costume change is a delight, embroiling him ever deeper as he navigates the complex set with agility, menace, pathos (if we can believe him) and humor, and twists the plot off on a new angle.

The play, under Rees' direction (and who could know better how he wanted it to go?) is not just another romantic, mystery thriller in which one has an engaging evening trying to out-guess him.

And finding out that, in the end, he outwitted you.

Williamstown Theatre Festival | wtfestival.org
Roger Rees, Artistic Director
Box Office: '62 Center Box Office,
Route 2, Williamstown, MA 01267,
Telephone: 413-243-0745.
Online ticketing is available at wtfestival.org.