The Desperate Hours
Reviewed by Taylor Kass
The Group Repertory Theatre
Through July 10
In small-town Indiana, it’s a day like any other – until it isn’t. In The Group Rep’s production of Joseph Hayes’s 1955 Tony award winning hit The Desperate Hours, suburban everyman Dan Hilliard (Lee Grober) and his family are suddenly thrust into a life-or-death balancing act when a trio of escaped bank robbers break into the Hilliard home and hold the family hostage while the thieves evade police. Director Jules Aaron’s effective staging attempts to keep the energy up, but the gripping storyline is ultimately slowed down by too many characters and convoluted motivations. As the hours tick by, the less logical (and less desperate) the heist seems.
The play is bolstered by its adrenaline-pumping plot, but even the moments of peril and light violence feel governed by an honor code reminiscent of a simpler time. The trio of thieves allow their captives to go to work and keep up appearances, placing a remarkable amount of trust in the family that they are holding hostage. The Hilliard family in turn agrees to not notify authorities while they’re out, somewhat naively believing that they will be unharmed if they play by the rules of their captors. It’s a clean-cut nostalgia where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the bad guys are only bad because they had a tough childhood.
There’s a topical layer of nuance in the story of Jesse Bard (Fox Carney), the police officer who had used unnecessarily brutal force when previously arresting criminal mastermind Glen Griffin (Davino Buzzotta). But these uncomfortable wrinkles in the good guy / bad guy binary are too neatly resolved with a line by FBI agent Harriet Carson (Katelyn Ann Clark): “…we’ve climbed a long way out of the slime. Maybe that slime still clings to some of us. Them… and civilized men can’t let the slime on them drag us back down. If we don’t live by the rules, the rules will soon disappear.” In 2022, the “slime” seems to stick to all of us, and the rules that prop up our civilization seem shakier by the day.
The Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood; Fri. – Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through July 10. Running time: 2 hours with one 15-minute intermission. www.thegrouprep.com.
