`Toyer,” by Gardner McKay, gives us another shot at the old “woman-in-peril” routine.
As followers of such plays and movies as “Scream,” “Wait Until Dark” and “Extremities” are well aware, this involves trapping a beautiful female in a house with a sadistic male who wants to ravish and/or kill her.
The woman here is Maude Christopher, a psychiatrist whose work involves treating some of the 11 women who have been raped and brutally maimed by a scalpel-wielding terrorist.
The man is Peter Matson who, posing as a helpful young itinerant, gains entry to Maude’s Randall Canyon home near Los Angeles and then, making sure that he has cut off all avenues of escape, tells her that he is the dread assailant.
Or is he? He’s such an amiable sort when we first see him that it’s hard to believe he could be such an evil person.
Indeed, part of the trickery in McKay’s script is that, until the very end, we (and Maude) are not supposed to know if Peter really is the demented brute he gleefully admits to being.
Until then, when the lights fade out on a final scene of approaching bloodshed, it’s cat-and-mouse time in Maude’s home, with woman and man both trying to gain the upper hand in their deadly struggle. He waves a knife at her; she waves a knife at him. She takes off her bra; he takes off his shirt.
The extra twist to this familiar sex-and-suspense game is provided by Maude and Peter being characters on the edge. Maude, who has just broken up with her boyfriend, becomes as creepy and as disturbed as Peter is — or as Peter pretends to be.
Director Daniel Taube’s staging for TNT Productions and the Element Theatre Company has made this bit of flim-flam come out fairly smoothly, with Tom Daniel’s set design fitting Maude’s home neatly into the small square of Victory Gardens’ upstairs studio.
Daniel also gives the role of Peter a credibly off-balancing mix of likability and menace. But neither he nor Bibi Tinsley, as Maude, give the play the sudden, sharp jolts of terror, disorientation and turnabout that it needs as it lumbers along from one plot twist to the next.
Still, creaky as the old formula is, it continues to wield its power over a willing audience. Peeping Toms that we are, we just love to look in on the mayhem.
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“Toyer”
When: Through Aug. 17
Where: Victory Gardens Upstairs Studio, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-871-3000
