In the director's notes and press information, Machala waxes on about Everyman and the American Dream, and people who "for one reason or another" commit dirty deeds. "One reason or another"? To be crudely simplistic, you can discuss Cain's deft dissection of America's underbelly all you want, as long as you don't forget what's under the belly. Cain went fairly dreamy over the commingling of sex and violence, and the entire, um, thrust of Double Indemnity concerns what happens when sex, the ultimate American Dream, is over, and reality begins. When insurance salesman Walter Huff (Kevin McKeon) decides to help viperous housewife Phyllis Nirdlinger (Rachel Glass) take out a truly beneficial accident policy on her husband (Jim Dean), he's heading for the world's most troubled orgasm. Post-coital conversation is just a bit more difficult when murder has been the main act.
Machala focuses heavily, and somewhat successfully, on the iconic ingenuity of Cain's plot -- the double-crosses, the ironic twists, the longing for redemption -- and misses the brutal longing in his language. Neither McKeon nor Glass throw off any sparks because Machala hasn't given them the right sticks to rub together. Her production feels like a coy, studied pose, and, crucially, doesn't maneuver the transitions from narration to dialogue and back again with the usual Book-It grace. If she wanted to erase the memory of the stellar Billy Wilder film version of this material, as she says she does, Machala should not have relied on canned music (playing the scores from Psycho and Chinatown) and an awkward recorded voiceover. There's some amusement in watching the lovers' tight plan unravel, and Jason Meininger's lights do some nice things with Machala's noirish stage pictures, but amusement is not engagement. Book-It Theatre productions are usually done with a certain amount of brains; what's lacking in Double Indemnity, however, is that quality provided by something a little further south.
