Long Beach Shakespeare Company deftly de-immortalizes a classic

There are several things disconcerting about the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon–that Sam Spade smokes Djarum cigarettes; that he wears cuffless pants; that he’s a blond. But none are so difficult to reconcile as the distance between the seminal 1941 film version of the story, and this—another adaptation done 66 years later, and nearly 80 years after Hammett’s novel was published.

The Company succeeds with its adaptation—one designated the official Falcon adaptation by the Hammett family, for presentation by theater troupes around the country. But it’s successful for all the right reasons, not the easy ones. You’d expect a troupe of experienced actors to win you over with a spirited reading of what has become the Gone With the Wind of film noir—and they accomplish that. But this production succeeds when and where it veers farthest away from what we remember from John Huston’s jazzy 1941 telling of the tale.

With its crisp, modern, street-wise adaptation of Hammett’s novel, with its casting, and with its filming—pioneering the hard light and dark shadows that are now textbook film noir—there are huge areas in which the movie can’t be beat. And so the Company wisely picks others to exploit.

Their Sam Spade is blond—as indeed Hammett’s original was: a “blond Satan”—but in the hands of able actor Dan Flapper, he’s twice the fast talker and only perhaps half as omniscient as Bogart. In other words he, like every member of this cast, is unquestionably human—a characteristic which today it’s difficult to assign to any member of the 1941 Falcon film cast because they’ve become immortal.

On stage, we’re forced to realize this will be more a drawing-room drama, less the story of the street that both the book and the 1941 movie were. The physical dynamics of Spade frisking the gunsel—a scary, undefineable Hunter Greene as Wilmer, in the Elisha Cook Jr. movie role—won’t work quite as well, and neither will the numerous scuffles.

But by personalizing an at-times almost soulless, bouncy film, the cast—which also includes an excellent Nina Silver in the Brigid O’Shaughnessy role and a clingy good Jessica McLean as Iva Archer—at times becomes the characters they’re playing. That’s an accomplishment which today it’s difficult to say whether the cast of Huston’s 1941 classic ever achieves. They’re too busy being cool, and tossing off clipped little insults. Real people don’t talk like that, even today.

The play is longer than the film. It adds back in several key scenes and it very interestingly adapts others to a stage with no set changes. There’s more dialogue, and the characters—particularly Flapper and Silver—let their emotions run away. Words are mangled and shouted, almost too loud at times. The story of the Maltese falcon—a jewel-encrusted statue sent hundreds of years ago as tribute from the Knights of Malta to the King of Spain, then stolen en route—is explored more fully by Daniel Mason Smith as Casper Gutman. Smith doesn’t tell the story perfectly—but he tells it the way a real man would.

The same is true of Nina Silver in what is perhaps the play’s most difficult role. She has to at once convince us she’s lying to the main protagonist, then make us want to be with her—and she does it. Not with Mary Astor’s icy cool film delivery, but in warm tones, with too many repeated words—said the way a woman in love (or pretending) might.

You leave knowing—or you should—that this version of the hardboiled classic will be different each night, and that’s a good thing. And when its run ends next month, we’ll have Bogart et al to remind us of it—the same way each time forever.

LONG BEACH SHAKESPEARE COMPANY’S THE MALTESE FALCON THE RICHARD GOAD THEATRE | 4250 ATLANTIC AVE | LONG BEACH 90807 | 562.997.1494 | LBSHAKESPEARE.ORG | THURS-SAT 8PM; SUN 2PM | THROUGH NOV 3 | $10-15

Tags: long beach shakespeare company, Theater