Double Indemnity at Round House Theatre

Double Indemnity

Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway Bethesda

When hard-boiled insurance agent Walter Huff meets femme fatale Phyllis Nirlinger, the wife of a wealthy client, he quickly realizes that she wants to get rid of her husband ‑ and decides to help her do it. Accident insurance pays double indemnity on railroad mishaps, so they plot to get Nirlinger on ‑ and off ‑ a train without arousing the suspicions of the police, the insurance company, Nirlinger’s daughter, her mysterious boyfriend, or Nirlinger himself.

Thru - Jun 24, 2012

Show Type: Drama

Running Time: 2 hours with 1 intermission

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Double Indemnity Reviews

Average Rating based on 7 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Washington Post - Somewhat Recommended

"...At bottom, there’s no real feel for genre or for the bold characterizations and human crack-ups that make Cain’s story so durable. Why this gripping book and landmark movie had to be converted into any kind of stage project at all — that’s a mystery."

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- Nelson Pressley

DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended

"...I was honored to be in the audience last night to catch this last production under the stewardship of Artistic Director Blake Robison. What a way to complete his seven year tenure as Producing Artistic Director with this gripping noir and powerful evening of theatre. Originally written by James M. Cain in 1935, Round House Theatre’s Double Indemnity was adapted for the stage by David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright. It’s set in 1936 in California, and is based on the 1944 movie about an actual 1927 Queens, New York murder."

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- Eric Denver

Talkin Broadway - Recommended

"...Director Eleanor Holdridge understands how to present the drama—adapted by David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright from James M. Cain's novel—in stylized terms. Conway's scenic design is all deceptive surfaces, a wall of pivoting panels that allow actors to vanish, and a door that (thanks to Nancy Schertler's lighting design) shifts color from dark wood stain to blood red. Kathleen Geldard's costumes tell the viewer everything necessary to know about the characters."

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- Susan Berlin

Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended

"... It isn’t boring. It just never adds up to anything more than a curious alternate version of a classic film that casts a long shadow, pun fully intended. As Huff tells Phyllis when he first meets her: “It’s hard to sell someone on something if they’re happy with what they’ve got.”"

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- Chris Klimek

Washingtonian - Somewhat Recommended

"... The problem here is in the setup: In the play’s crucial opening scenes, Huff and Mrs. Nirlinger seem to stumble into their murderous project without having established any of the impulsive passion that would make such a weighty decision believable. The pair meet by chance, and suddenly they’re ready to kill."

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- Gwendolyn Purdom

MD Theatre Guide - Somewhat Recommended

"...The adaptation of the novel to the stage, or to film, is never easy. The novel’s narrative voice allows its audience to enter the story as an intimate participant. When Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler tackled Cain’s novel for the now famous film back in the 1940s, they succeeded because they could combine their rival expertises–Wilder’s for film’s voyeuristic witness and Chandler’s for prose’s psychological depth. What this production of Double Indemnity lacks is that comparable psychological partner. Although we enjoy the theatrical style and flare, and take pleasure in the wonderful showmanship, we are left wanting the psychological substance; and without that, we are left to ponder why for?"

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- Robert Michael Oliver

DCTheatreScene - Somewhat Recommended

This new adaptation of Cain’s crime novel by actors turned writers David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright captures the moody, noir atmosphere admirably but wrecks itself through stilted performances and clunky plotting (based on the charmingly flawed novel, which is a curio of its time and unfortunately not on the far superior screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, which has stood the test of time).

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- Roy Maurer

Double Indemnity at Round House Theatre