Veteran Milwaukee stage actor Mary MacDonald Kerr fills the intimate Studio Theater with both anticipation and suspense in the one-woman show, The Detective’s Wife.
The play, by Chicago playwright Keith Huff, is a humdinger of a mystery. At intermission, audiences may think they’ve got things all figured out. By the end of the play, however, Detective’s Wife winds up raising more questions than it answers.
In the skilled hands of director Jim Tasse, Kerr is masterful at keeping the audience’s attention riveted on her character. She plays Alice Conroy, wife of a Chicago police detective. The piece is set in their living room. She begins the play with a tantalizing phrase: “When my husband died on duty, I lost my voice.” It turns out that she means this literally. Many of her communications to others are sent as messages written on a small notepad (more on this later).
Kerr speaks directly to the audience throughout the play. In an hour and 45 minutes – which seem to fly by – she takes us through the grisly details of her husband’s murder and its aftermath. She speaks unflinchingly, as one might expect from a woman who was a police officer’s wife for more than 20 years. Now, a widow at age 52, Alice decides to solve the case of her husband’s death.
In a mystery, of course, one encounters all manner of twists and turns. In this regard, Detective’s Wife doesn’t disappoint. Alice is convinced that her husband, post-mortem, is encouraging her to solve this riddle. She claims to have seen him as a ghost. This announcement is followed by a number of tantalizing references to Hamlet that a seasoned theatergoer or literature lover will appreciate.
Alice, undaunted by the seeming indifference of the police force to which her husband once belonged, tries various paths to discover the truth. With every dead end, she redoubles her efforts like a bulldog tightening its grip. Eventually, she regains her voice.
Kerr is adept at impersonating the various people in Alice’s life, such as her husband’s former partner, her own adult children, her therapist, etc. She transforms herself into these other roles so effortlessly that the bond between her and the audience remains unbroken.
Interestingly, Kerr’s costume never changes throughout the performance. Although the play takes place over a period of months, Kerr is never offstage. She wears an outfit that is as relaxed as Kerr’s acting style. She is dressed in a faded denim shirt over a printed silk top and a mid-length linen skirt. Her shoes appear somewhere between a slipper and a casual sandal. Kerr often moves her hands over her pixie-ish haircut, which immediately springs back into shape.
One of the intriguing stage devices is a set of large, flat screens at the back of the set. For most of the play, they appear as windows. When Kerr struggles to regain use of her vocal chords, she communicates by writing short messages on a notepad. As she slides a piece of notepaper across the desk, the image is also is projected on the screens. It is an engaging device, which is used later in the play to project images of her husband’s death scene. The enlarged photos are detailed enough to give the audience – as well as Alice -- some clues about the detective’s death.
The Detective’s Wife should delight longtime Mary MacDonald Kerr fans as well as mystery lovers and those who appreciate a good tale. And Milwaukee Chamber Theater can count Detective’s Wife among its artistic successes this season.
