The Stanley BFL CANADA Stage to March 8, 2026
Tickets from $29 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com
Posted February 23, 2026
“The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”, quoth Robbie Burns. And how “agley” do murderous plans go in Dial M for Murder? Exceedingly. Hilariously.
In the play, Tony Wendice (Tyrell Crews) is left improvising like mad when his meticulously planned murder of his rich wife Margot (Emily Dallas) goes south.
Credit: Trudie Lee
This Arts Club production, in partnership with Theatre Calgary, opens with Margot’s best friend Maxine Hadley (Olivia Hutt), an American crime writer, describing the five motives for murder: money, fear, jealousy, revenge and protecting someone you love. It’s all in good fun – until it isn’t. (In the spirit of updating, there are at least six reasons for murder now: money, fear, jealousy, revenge, protecting someone you love and finding yourself #94 in a phone queue to speak to your internet provider. True story. Well, no murder, just murderous thoughts.)
Margot’s husband Tony – a failed writer – is Maxine’s publisher but her career has hit the skids. She’s living in a cold walk-up in Greenwich Village while Margot and Tony are living in style in their luxurious Mayfair flat. (Set designer Anton deGroot falls a little short on luxury in his attempt to replicate the mid-1950s).
On the pretext of having a luxury vehicle for sale, Tony lures Lesgate, a petty crook and former Cambridge University classmate, to the flat and the plot – full of twists and turns – unwinds from there.
It was with low expectations that I caught the Sunday matinee – not that I didn’t expect high production values with Itai Erdal’s spooky lighting design – pricking out a coat stand, a liquor trolley or other various items in the darkened flat – or Anton Lipovetsky’s creepy, hair-raising composition and sound – but why bother with an old chestnut written in 1952 for BBC television by Frederick Knott, a British screenwriter, a stage play later in that year and eventually an Alfred Hitchcock film in 1954?
I surprised myself by having a really good time. This production, directed by Jillian Keiley, is a fast-paced romp and who isn’t ready for a fast-paced romp with the world seemingly going to hell in a handbasket? Act 1 is packed with plenty of exposition but peppered with humour and polite British dialogue: (“What are you doing here?” asks a terrified Margo of an intruder. “I’m afraid I have come to kill you” replies the murderer.) And we get all sorts of reasons for disliking Margot’s philandering husband in addition to his nasty plan to murder his wife. It all comes to a head in Act 2, especially with the arrival of Inspector Hubbard (Shekhar Paleja), who initially appears a bit dim – in the old trope of the thick-as-a-brick cop – and Dial M for Murder reaches a conclusion in a real rush: hidden and stolen keys, fingerprints, locked doors and £5,000 that changes hands quicker than you can say Brexit.
In spite of a truly bad red wig, Dallas is a believable Margot, an upper-class Brit, initially dressed in a lovely burgundy and gold-embroidered dress (by Jolane Houle), and Crews is a dapper, conniving Tony. Hutt makes a flamboyant, slightly hysterical Maxine, leaving us to wonder why she and Margot are friends. But without Hutt and a delightful performance by Paleja, as well as the unfortunate, snivelling Lesgate (Stafford Perry), this Dial M for Murder would not be nearly as much fun. (I doubt the Hitchcock film, starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland, was designed to be ‘fun’ at all – mostly just terrifying – but it was famously filmed in 3D.)
Knott originally created Max Hadley, not Maxine Hadley; a 2022 re-write by Jeffrey Hatcher does a gender switch but keeps the action in 1950’s London. In this Arts Club/Theatre Calgary production, there is a very, very slow stage revolve. It’s so slow, you’re not certain it’s actually happening until you realize the desk is now stage right and the liquor cart is now almost centre stage. The effect is strangely, deliberately unsettling. Not only is murder afoot but you can’t even trust the room in which the murder happens. Cool.