Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Mimi d’Autremont for the New York Times.
Over a 40-year run, Catherine Russell has starred in all but four performances of Perfect Crime. It’s a job, and she doesn’t care what critics say about the script.

Some of you may have seen The Fantasticks when in New York City. It ran for 42 years and closed in 2002. It was well beloved and launched many stars.

Ben Kawaller writes at the (UK) Times, about another New York show that is reaching that benchmark — in spite of not being beloved at all. Kawaller focuses on the almost heroic actor who has been in Perfect Crime for the whole time.

“New York’s longest-running play may also be its most hated,” he writes. “It is the lowest-ranked out of 28 live shows listed on the site Show Score, where a third of its reviews give zero, one, or even half a star out of five. … On TripAdvisor, one user warns: ‘Don’t waste your money!’ Another pleads: ‘Kill me now!’

“And yet, since 1987, Perfect Crime has been running eight times a week. Every performance stars the same actress, Catherine Russell; in nearly four decades she has missed only four performances, and has an ‘understudy,’ per rules set by the Actors’ Equity Association, in name only.

“I first witnessed Perfect Crime as a teenager in the early 2000s. All I remember from that experience is that it starred a blond, leggy knockout. Now 69, that knockout is still knocking about in the role of Margaret Brent, an inscrutable psychiatrist who may or may not have murdered her husband.

“I’m not trying to avoid a spoiler with that phrasing: I couldn’t spoil Perfect Crime if I wanted to, as I have more or less no idea what happens over the course of this two-hour play, or why any of it happens. It’s a four-character murder mystery involving a married couple of psychiatrists trying to get away with having murdered their chef. There’s a detective on their trail making trouble, along with a patient of Margaret’s who I think gets off on simulating murder while wearing a dress. There are gunshots, and an intermission.

That is nearly all I can recall of Perfect Crime, I suppose because watching this play is what I imagine it would be like to experience the onset of dementia.

“Actions are taken for no evident reason; proclamations are made apropos of seemingly nothing. It somehow unfolds chronologically but not sequentially. …

“That’s not to say the show doesn’t have its admirers. If you can follow its plot, says one online review, you may very well find yourself ‘screaming in joy.’ Others call it ‘clever,’ ‘fun’ and ‘thought-provoking.’

“And so on it chugs, attracting a few dozen a night to the Theater Center, the no-frills performance space on West 50th Street where Russell is also the general manager. … The show is a permanent fixture at TKTS, the Theatre Development Fund’s half-price same-day ticket booth. Russell added that most of the show’s tickets are sold on TodayTix, and that on average the show sells 50–60 tickets per weeknight.

“On January 5, I attended what a sign next to the theatre entrance informed me was performance number 15,429. … Most of the people I spoke to afterwards told me that they enjoyed the play. Two of them even claimed to have understood it.

“I was not one of them, which colors my ability to appraise Russell’s performance. There is a rushed quality to the whole thing, including mundane acts like juggling multiple phone calls (Dr Brent is evidently able to place people on hold without pressing any buttons on her phone). … At the same time, Russell has a magnetic, irrepressible stage presence, impossible to look away from as she barrels through the material. I found her fascinating. …

“I met the wiry, youthful, almost-septuagenarian on the fourth floor of the Theater Center. She greeted me warmly and as we walked together into the theatre, I wondered how long I could go without betraying my honest feelings. …

“Russell rescued me: ‘If I got upset over everybody who didn’t like Perfect Crime, I’d never get out of bed.’

“It also helps that the time Russell spends as Dr Brent takes up only a sliver of her professional life. Her other jobs are teaching English at Baruch, teaching acting at NYU and running the Theater Center, which has four performance spaces. In addition to Perfect Crime, the venue houses musical ‘parodies’ of Seinfeld, Friends and The Office, which Russell sub-licensed. …

“Russell graduated from Cornell University in 1977 with a degree in English and theatre. In 1980, she got a master’s in Educational Theatre from NYU, and began teaching undergraduates in 1981.

“Perfect Crime found her several years thereafter, when she acted in a theatre company helmed by its writer, Warren Manzi. They initially put up the play as a 16-performance showcase, and then, with Manzi’s attorney cousin producing, launched its off-Broadway production. From there it took off, to everyone’s surprise.

“ ‘I didn’t think it would last six months,’ Russell said. ‘And it just kept going.’ ”

More at the (UK) Times, here. For a different take, read the New York Times article on Russell, here