by Frederick Knott.
(Second performance: Thursday at 7.30)

[Photo caption] Emrys Jones, Elizabeth Sellars and Raymond Huntley in "Dial 'M' for Murder"

The essence of tactics is, they say, surprise. And what's the essential quality of a thriller? Why, this same surprise. And that ties my hands in a pretty tight knot when it comes to introducing Dial 'M' For Murder, which is one long series of adroit tactical twists. Frederick Knott has taken a story of jealousy and put an uncommon number of angles into the old eternal triangle.
Here in a London flat live Tony Wendice, an ex-lawn-tennis champion, and his wife Sheila. Ostensibly, they are a couple as happy as they are charming. But Sheila has had a love affair with one Max, who has been in America for the last year and is now returned; and, although she thinks it is a secret, husband Tony has known about it for a long time. Thereafter, the plot (as we used to say) thickens: indeed, it positively coagulates, and our blood ought to curdle, from time to time, with it.
An anonymous blackmailer has come on the scene - who? And what should happen if someone plans revenge? There arrives a shady accomplice: intricate murder plots are laid: but which Cock Robin is it that is to die? And are the police to be fooled for ever? Dial 'M' For Murder pursues a devious and maze-like way, with blind alleys to pull us up sharp, and sudden diversions to keep us going. The dumbest man at detection in the world, yet hazard a word of advice: watch that business of the Front Door Key! For it might be the key to the denouement.
(Lionel Hale)