Modern spin on classic tale

FREDERICK Knott’s clever murder thriller was famously filmed by Hitchcock in the Fifties, and the neat “will he get away with it” story has been ripe for updating for some years


Fans of the drama have got their wish thanks to currently hot young director Lucy Bailey, who shows the script some respect while creating (with designer Mike Britton) a simple-looking but elaborate set within a blood-red box.

Within this all the furniture is set on a revolve that can show us the “murder room” - the Wendice drawing room - from several angles.

Dial M was always a strongly-written story — just like Knott’s other enduring thriller, “Wait Until Dark”.

In this one former tennis player and cuckolded husband Tony Wendice gets an old school friend to bump off his wife, but the plot goes wrong and the pal is killed by the victim instead.

Wendice makes sure it looks like murder rather than self-defence, and the wife is condemned to death. Can her former lover Max (Philip Cairns), and canny detective Hubbard save her?

Everything hinges on the door key, and which of the couple knows it is in a secret hiding place...

Bailey emphasises the cruel cunning of Wendice, played strongly here by Daniel Betts as he casually condemns his wife to get his hands on her money.

The wife is played by Kelly Hotten, who plays light, then feisty then shell-shocked as the sentence in pronounced.

Hubbard is Columbo-like in the hands of Christopher Timothy, with his own “one more thing” moments that get Wendice spinning more and more lies to get himself out of the mire.

I’m not convinced that Bailey has created a revival with massive new potential, but she certainly puts a modern touch on Knott’s play that keeps it fresh while respecting its origins.

Likewise her simple direction would work in a traditional static room set, but the visuals add a welcome deeper aspect to the drama.