Theater Reviews

Oct 15, 2009 - Reno Little Theater presents James Yaffe's "Cliffhanger"

By Jack Neal

Playwright James Yaffe’s so-called thriller, “Cliffhanger,” opened the Reno Little Theater’s 75th season Friday night (9/25/09) at Reno’s Hug High School.

The play would appear to have all the necessary ingredients to slide menacingly into the kind of chills and thrills associated with Halloween. The location is isolated in a small town in the Rockies. The leading man is an aging idealistic professor of philosophy pushed beyond the bounds of ethical behavior by a much younger colleague - a thoroughly nasty woman and the Philosophy Department chairman. She’s noisy, vindictive and wants him to retire. Academic rivalry can be a grand plot for excitement. Sadly, this mystery is more cozy than threatening.

The play begins with a reflexive act of violence by the professor against his department chairman. She’s so vengeful few, if any, mind when she’s done in. The plot slightly thickens when a failing student arrives on his motorcycle and demands that the professor change his grade. His intrusion should make messy matters even messier.

The problem is that there is no bite to any of these characters. The professor and his wife are close-knit to the point of almost total placidity. Not that anyone should be murdered, but the deceased is so shrill it’s a relief to have her snuffed out. The arrival of the student in need of a grade change without some sinister reason for doing so, like a relationship that might place the professor in line for blackmail, doesn’t add up. So -Yaffe’s plot is weird but not terrifying.

Doug A. Mishler’s scenic design is simple, but very attractive. As is his lighting, which provides the play’s look with a handsome environment for murder.

The cast is community-theater solid but can’t make Yaffe’s play rise to a level of riveting mystery. The professor, played coolly by Kirk Gardner, is Socratic. The department chairman, played with furor by Erin Slimak, is fascistic. The student, played with snide jerkmanship by Colin Coate, is motor-cyclic. Add to this odd-ball crowd the professor’s doting wife, played with smug practicality by Cathy Gabrieli, and a screwball police detective played with small-town naivete by Michelle Perez, and “Cliffhanger” – in spite of good efforts all around - just doesn’t cliff hang.

Director McKenzi L. Swinehart tries her best to make an Alfred Hitchcock thriller out of Yaffe’s thin material and comes up with but a mildly entertaining two hours of theater.

The Reno Little Theater’s “Cliffhanger” can be seen at the Hug High School Little Theater, Sutro Street at North McCarran Boulevard, Reno, Nevada, September 25, 26, October 2, 3, 9, 10 (2009) at 7:30 p.m. and September 27, October 4, 11 (the performance reviewed) at 2 p.m. Next up for Reno Little Theater is Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan” December 4-6, 11-13, 18-20 (2009). For information call 775-329-0661.