Theater: Gordiam Knott

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Wait Until Dark. A middling mystery thriller is rather like a war: 90% boredom and 10% terror. Wait Until Dark does not fight the percentages.

A doll containing two pounds of heroin has fallen inadvertently into the hands of a photographer and his blind wife (Lee Remick). They do not know what it contains, and after the husband is lured away, Lee Remick does not even know where the doll is, though an unlikely-looking safe is part of the living-room furniture. Two musclemen and their brainmaster do know about the doll, and they want it.

The crooks concoct an elaborate hoax about being cops, and there is much hokum with rattling of Venetian blinds, fake phone calls, unscrewing of fuses, disguises of voice. But Lee Remick is a sightless Penelope with uncanny perception who carefully unravels in Act II everything that the crooks have carelessly knitted in Act I; it takes a pretty dedicated mystery fan to follow every purl three, drop one, of this crazy pattern. In Act III the mayhem picks up, and a refrigerator becomes the most electrifying actor in the house.

Frederick Knott, who also wrote Dial M for Murder, has left this plot-boiler perforated with illogic. At one point Lee Remick has located the doll, hidden it beyond likelihood of discovery, and decoyed the thugs out of the apartment. Instead of staying to be tortured or killed, she ought to call the police or flee. Playwright Knott seems to have forgotten that to scare a playgoer out of his senses, one must first satisfy his good sense.