Sleuthing the Night Away

The Secret of the Biological Clock – Eclectic Full Contact Theatre

Back in the 1930’s, following the earlier success of his Hardy Boy mystery series, Edward Stratemeyer created a young female sleuth who would become the star of her own string of whodunnits.  He named her Nancy Drew. As he did with the Hardy Boys, Stratemeyer wrote the plot outlines and then hired various ghostwriters to flesh out the stories. The Hardy Boy books are credited to the fictional Franklin W. Dixon, while the Nancy Drew novels were published under the pseudonym of Caroline Keene. Nancy is a precocious, independent 16-year-old, greatly influenced by her fictional lawyer father, and an old-fashioned model of the American Girl. Over the years, Nancy’s popularity has never waned, although the character has been continually modernized, bringing the supergirl sleuth into the 21st century.

Playwright, feminist and co-founding artistic director of South Florida’s Lost Girls Theatre, Andie Arthur has taken both the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy characters a step further. Adapting the title of The Secret of the Old Clock, the very first of the Nancy Drew adventures, Ms. Arthur has changed the characters’ names and adjusted the plot to allow her play to reflect many of today’s social concerns. 

In this very long one-act, Arthur tells the story of another 16-year-old named Jasmine. Tasked with solving they mysterious disappearance of her father, Robert Wilder, former teenage amateur detective, this scholar of the school of hard knocks and the foster system knows that there’s only one person who can help her. Confident that she can lure Eleanor Dawson, another former teen sleuth, out of retirement, Jasmine discovers that Ms. Dawson is now married to Peter Wilder, her father’s younger brother. Add to the mix, we have Franklin Wilder, the boys’ kindly father and retired flatfoot, along with Alice Garcia, a close family friend and currently a member of the town police force. The play is an imaginative, sometimes amusing story about what can happen when teenage phenoms grow into adulthood. 

This play, which premiered in Miami, is directed here by company member, Katherine Siegel. She keeps her two-hour production moving and the seven-member cast fully invested, but the story becomes a little confusing at times. There are several sudden flashbacks, as well as an unnecessary subplot about having children, that doesn’t add much to the story at hand and makes the play longer. Add to this, a great deal of distracting, plot-stopping furniture and prop placement and you have a melodrama that could benefit from some judicious editing and simplification. Zoe Rosenfeld’s stark scenic design makes good use of the intimate Studio Two venue, and Liz Cooper manages to light the production with enough shadows to create  a mysterious mood. Kudos, too, to Corey Bradberry for his sound design and retro musical interludes.

But, despite sleuthing the night away, the story just isn’t as engaging as one would hope. Perhaps an intermission might’ve helped make the evening feel less like an endurance test, but the play could benefit from editing. The premise of creating a play around former fictional teenage characters who are now grown up is intriguing, smart and clever. There’s even a few glimmers of wit and whimsy in Andie Arthur’s script. Siegel’s cast is fine, especially the effervescent, extremely likable Aziza Macklin, as Jasmine, and the engaging Kelly Levander, as self-doubting adult super sleuth, Eleanor Dawson. And, although she isn’t given a whole lot to do in this play, Elise Soeder shows strength and flair portraying Dawson’s teenage persona, Ellie. All in all, this is sometimes an entertaining mystery story that shows a lot of promise.

Somewhat Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented May 6- June 2 by Eclectic Full Contact Theatre in Studio Two of the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling 773-935-6875 or by going to www.electic-theatre.com.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.