For generations of young readers of mystery books, the Nancy Drew series has been synonymous with adventure.
Becoming Sharp, Shadow Theatre’s clever parody of the mystery series, is an elegant escapist concoction that takes theatregoers into the scary world of the writer’s mind.
From the beginning until the last chapter has been typed, the play is an ingenious puzzle that keeps us on the edge of our seats as it examines the crimes people commit to bolster their egos.
Using his fascination for popular culture, playwright David Belke draws us back to the ’60s, an era when juvenile mystery series reached their peak.
In Becoming Sharp, Belke does more than create another puzzling adventure for the audience to decipher. He shows how three women struggle for possession of both a personal and literary identity with disastrous consequences.
Mystery writer Eleanor Innes has signed a deadly deal with a publishing house to create four Sally Keen books per year for 12 years writing under the moniker Sylvia Sharp.
After cranking out plot lines like hamburger for years, the publisher is refusing her out-dated copy. Eleanor is suffering from brain freeze and remedies the situation by hiring Judy Parker, a bubbly, idealistic young ghost writer eager to make a difference.
Brimming with enthusiasm, Judy proposes various new ideas and sets about typing copy. However, Eleanor wants no radical changes to her formula and soon becomes jealous of Judy’s fresh approach to writing.
Thrown into the already combustible mix is Penelope, a slightly sinister housekeeper who knows where the skeletons are buried and won’t hesitate to resurrect them to get what she wants.
Belke lays a trail of breadcrumbs and bit-by-bit it becomes obvious all three are clamouring to be recognized as Sylvia Sharp.
Since the stylized play is set in the 1960s, the props loosely conform to a mystery writer’s study: two wooden desks, a typewriter, bookshelves, a skeleton’s head, a chalice and a locked wardrobe.
The only jarring elements are banner-wide ceiling-to-floor sheets of text splattered in red, a suggestion that blood has been spilled in the quest for fame.
The play is a series of absurd and humorous machinations perfectly suited to the parody even as the performers play their parts completely straight.
And John Hudson applies a light directorial touch that heightens the comedy and adds a patina of finesse to the insane situation.
Linda Grass plays Eleanor as a cigarette-waving bored sophisticate, a woman so derailed by blind ambition and narcissism that she has shackled her personal identity to a fictional writer – a dangerous move at best.
Swept up in the excitement of a new challenge, Judy, played by St. Albert’s Jenna Dykes-Busby, is oblivious to her own naivetĂ© and subsequently allows herself to be held hostage to Eleanor’s whims. But like the series sleuth Sally Keen, Judy is whip-smart and adds up the baffling clues just in time for a showdown.
Lianna Shannon as Penelope – named after the Greek hero Ulysses’ long-ignored wife – is Eleanor’s housekeeper and she’s tired of grovelling for a tyrannical employer. Shannon’s Penelope is dark, brooding and edgy and whenever she is on stage all eyeballs are on her.
The three actresses are perfectly matched as individual performers yet relay an incendiary chemistry that keeps the interest high and the action clipping along.
The play is loaded with as many pop culture references as weapons, and the delicious why-dunnit twist ending makes for a very satisfying conclusion.
Becoming Sharp runs at The Backstage Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barns until May 17.
Review
Becoming Sharp<br />Shadow Theatre production<br />Runs until May 17<br />At Backstage Theatre<br />ATB Financial Arts Barns<br />10330 – 84 Ave.
