Adaptation Note: Jeffrey Hatcher, DIAL M FOR MURDER

Frederick Knott’s DIAL M FOR MURDER is one of those “perfect plays.” A puzzle piece in which everything fits together with a wonderfully satisfying click. So when Barry Edelstein at The Old Globe Theatre asked me to adapt it in 2020, I was daunted by the challenge. Barry said he wanted to see if something new could be brought to the story, especially in the relationship between Margot, the intended victim of the diabolical murder plot, and her lover, Max. Could Margot have more agency? Could she do more? And was there something interesting to be found in her relationship with the American mystery writer who stands by her while her husband, Tony, is doing everything he can to make sure she’s strangled to death or hanged?  Also, asked Barry, might there be a few more twists and turns I could find to add to the plot?

All this is very tricky. Frederick Knott’s 1952 stage thriller is justly famous for its Swiss watch plotting and brilliant denouement. To fiddle with such jewel-like precision is to court disaster. It’s very easy to unintentionally upend the whole mechanism. But I had working for me a deep familiarity with the play and with Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings. I knew the story very well, and with Barry’s encouragement I was able to find a way that almost immediately complicated –in a good way—the relationship between Margot and Max: by turning Max into Maxine. Now Margot’s lover was a woman and all of Margot and Max’s attempts to keep their affair under wraps suddenly had a new urgency, a ramped-up level of desperation.

This adaptation takes place in the same time period as the original: 1950s London, Mayfair, the moneyed class where it’s one thing for a woman’s affair with a man to be found out in the midst of a murder investigation; it’s something else entirely if it’s discovered that you’ve been sleeping with another woman. By turning Max into Maxine, a dozen doors opened for me, and none destabilized Knott’s painstakingly achieved equilibrium. And fortunately, I was able to find a few of those additional twists and turns that Barry asked for, ones that fit neatly into the nooks and crannies of Knott’s original pattern, and—I hope—provide additional gasps throughout the play.

DIAL M FOR MURDER is the most famous example of an “inverted mystery,” which means it’s not really a mystery at all. Unlike a whodunnit, we know rather early in the play who plans to kill whom and why. The fun comes in watching the plot unfold, unravel, be tied up again in what seems to be a perfect bow, and then blow up in the villains’ face. In popular culture, the most lasting and well-known example of the inverted mystery is COLUMBO. In the first 10 to 15 minutes of every episode, a sleek, polished, to the manor born killer appears to pull off the perfect murder. Then Columbo ambles in to find clues the murderer never thought about. Those “just one more thing” mistakes that allow Columbo to slowly pull the rug out from under our well-heeled murderer until the final “pop,” the “gotcha” that traps the villain inside his own hermetically-sealed box. Most recently on television, POKER FACE and ELSBETH play with the same inverted mystery form. It’s an elegant booby trap structure, and ringing the changes on it—basking in the familiarity of the form while finding variations within it—is a great joy. And COLUMBO, ELSBETH, POKER FACE and others all owe their success to the play and playwright that paved the way: DIAL M FOR MURDER by Frederick Knott. It’s been a great privilege to play inside Mr. Knott’s elaborately constructed fun house.  I hope it’s fun for you too.

Jeffrey Hatcher

Don’t miss this thrilling night at the theatre! Playing 28 Nov – 11 Jan, book tickets to DIAL M FOR MURDER.