The late author Ira Levin enjoyed some enormous successes. There were those best-selling books that inspired big-time films -- "Rosemary's Baby," "The Stepford Wives," "The Boys from Brazil." There were the hit plays "No Time for Sergeants" and "Deathtrap," which also generated popular movies.
And then there were the misses.
The musical "Drat! The Cat!," which Levin wrote the book and lyrics for, is one example. It managed eight performances after opening on Broadway in 1965. (We Streisand fanatics are forever grateful for this show because it contained a song she recorded wonderfully, "He Touched Me.")
Earlier, Levin experienced a disappointment with the play "Interlock," launched on Broadway in 1958 with no less than Rosemary Harris, Celeste Holm and Maximilian Schell in the leads. This one lasted four performances.
Is it really such a dud? There's a welcome opportunity to find out, thanks to Vagabond Players. The company may not have unearthed a long lost masterpiece, but it has certainly made an earnest and effective case for "Interlock."
Guiding that case is director Roy Hammond, who has written a note in the program about his friendship with the author and longtime goal of directing all of Levin's plays. It's easy to see what would draw Hammond to "Interlock."
Set in an upscale New York residence shortly after World War II, the work is described as a "psychological drama."
Holding court in the grand Gramercy Park home is the wheelchair-bound widow Mrs. Price, attended to by a young German emigre, Hilde, who considers herself more of a friend than a secretary. Enter Paul, Hilde's fiance, another immigrant from Germany, this one with a deep scar (not the one you might expect) from having grown up in the Third Reich.
Paul works in a bakery, but retains his original dream of being a concert pianist. Mrs. Price has a fine piano. In short order, an arrangement is made that finds the young man giving that instrument a workout, while working out possibilities for advancement, in more ways than one.
This isn't a thriller, a la "Deathtrap," though the three-act structure and occasional plot twist suggests big surprises might be around each corner. That there aren't may account for the play's ignoble fate 57 years ago.
This is, above all, a study in dependence and dominance, the whole servant and master relationship and how easily those interlocked roles can be flipped (the actual servants in the story are peripheral to that issue).
It's about manipulation of emotion and the truth; when to apologize and when to hold one's ground. There's room for philosophy, value systems, etiquette and at least a bit of sexual tension in the piece, too.
Levin doesn't turn all of this into gripping theater. He doesn't avoid occasional incongruities or clunky dialogue, either. But the result is nonetheless quite entertaining in its way. And Hammond makes the most of the material, giving the Vagabond production a fairly brisk pace that helps to minimize the weak spots and keep "Interlock" from feeling long.
The company has put together a basically sturdy cast and a handsome looking show (attention to period detail includes a Bonwit Teller shopping bag).
Mrs. Price is brought vibrantly to life by Laura Gifford, who proves adept at revealing the various shades of the cynical and conniving underneath the woman's cultured veneer. There are intensely focused performances from Rick Lyon-Vaiden as Paul and Karina Ferry as Hilde. (Both lay on the German accents with uber-diligence, but the result gets a wee bit close to parody.)
Lisa Walker (Lucille) and Grant Chism (Everett) manage to rise above the dated roles of maid and chauffeur. Like everyone else involved with the production, they seem to have found a key to getting something valuable out of "Interlock."