New Play in Manhattan

The Desperate Hours (adapted from his novel by Joseph Hayes) provides this season--and probably next--with a thriller after its own loud-beating heart. Playwright Hayes has fashioned an up-to-date old-fashioned melodrama about three escaped convicts who move in on a respectable Indianapolis family while waiting for getaway money from a confederate. The situation is rich in all kinds of human and ironic and psychological possibilities. But in The Desperate Hours such aspects pretty much lurk in corners. It is excitement that is stationed at the front door, suspense that guards the back, and tension that sneaks looks through the window.

Yet audiences will find something real, if not very realistic, in just such a setup. They can't help feeling like a truly captive audience, can't help identification with the Billiards--father and mother (well played by Karl Maiden and Nancy Coleman), daughter and son. And this sense of normal life suddenly swimming in nightmare lends a special piquancy to an otherwise movielike chronicle of thrills.

The Desperate Hours alternates scenes inside Howard Bay's clever two-floored house with quick snatches at police headquarters. The invaders make half the family go to work on pain of killing the other half at the slightest peep. Nor can the Hilliards set any trap that they won't also tumble into themselves. Even the police, after they have broken the story, can't shoot things out without maybe killing Hilliards instead of hoodlums.

Twisting and turning, the play (expertly directed by Robert Montgomery) achieves a maximum of melodramatic thrills, if never quite of spine-chilling terror.

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