IIn Tandem Theatre opens its 13th season this week with a murder-suspense comedy set in the art world. Joe DiPietro’s Art of Murder crosses drama and suspense with complex satire on the nature of contemporary art.
The play opens in a modern-day living room in the country. In the course of the play, it will become home to a quiet intensity between a quartet of people speaking some sharp dialogue crafted by a playwright best known for his work on the musical comedy I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.
Steven Koehler emerges from an isolation tank in the living room in the role of Jack, a ruggedly handsome artist. The similarly handsome Koehler is a UW-Milwaukee MFA graduate who is enjoying a successful career on the stage. Not all is well for his character, however, as Jack aims a gun at his wife, Annie, only a few minutes into the top of Act One.
Annie (played by Tiffany Vance, who has worked with a number of local theater companies) is also an artist, and is currently working on a painting. Jack wants to see the painting, but Annie refuses to show him. Annie is not surprised when Jack points the gun at her, though it comes as something of a shock to their Irish maid Katie (played by emerging talent Elizabeth Shipe) when she inadvertently walks in on the couple as Jack points the gun at Annie.
It’s a tense momentone with added tension when Jack points the gun at Katie a couple of times. She is soon relieved to find out that he has no intentions of killing either of them. The gun and its contents are intended for Vincent Cummings, a flamboyant art dealer played by Shakespearean talent T. Stacy Hicks. Vincent is running late, and Annie seems complicit with Jack’s idea of murdering him. Then again, this is a murder-mystery, and there are bound to be plot twists, aren’t there? And in any case, those bullets in the gun are blanks, aren’t they?
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In Tandem Theatre’s production of Art of Murder runs Oct. 22-Nov. 7 at the Tenth Street Theatre.
Theater Happenings
- A more traditional murder-mystery opens next week as Waukesha Civic Theatre presents its production of the Frederick Knott thriller Write Me a MurderOct. 29-Nov. 14.
- Also next week, UW-Milwaukee opens its first Mainstage Theatre production of the season with By the Bog of Cats. Marina Carr’s modern Irish retelling of the ancient story of Medea runs Oct. 27-31.
