DICK & TRACY: Espionage à Trois
(directed by Jerome Saibil)

Fans of Whose Line Is It Anyway? will enjoy this totally improvised detective thriller. The audience is asked for a key word of phrase to start things off and the three-person cast takes it from there. Sunday's show was based on the suggestion "golden mongoose." It provided some fertile ground for a Maltese Falcon kind of pot-boiler. Reif Larsen plays Dick Richards, San Francisco's best detective. Super-sharp Alix Sobler is his assistant Tracy B. Swell. Tom Gormican plays Jimmy The Jackknife. Countless other characters pop up as the story progresses.

Several interesting devices add interest. The actors are subject to surprise moments when they have to enact a flashback or make up an aside. It's a lot of fun watching them rise to the occasion (or be crushed by it), and trying not to crack up at something one of them has said. By the end, the story is apt to be a convoluted mess, but that's okay, too. It's not every day that a play is resolved by a zeppelin-ex-machina.
 
- Cam Fuller