Noir play

Overmyer, Eric. "Dark Rapture." Eric Overmyer: Collected Plays. Newbury, VT: Smith and Kraus, 1993.

Eric Overmyer's Dark Rapture is often subtitled "An American Theatre Noir," and it is in its recreation of film noir style and stereotypes that it is most captivating. It has all the proper noir ingredients: gangsters, three beautiful but dangerous femmes fatales, and one fairly bland leading man who nonetheless gets the girl and gets away with the cash. There are exotic locales, double-crosses, and characters who quote Raymond Chandler. In reading, the play seems to start out as pretty boring, but I suspect that if you dove right into the atmosphere and made the beginning highly stylized to capture the audience's attention right away, this would be an extremely fun play to watch or perform. While it took a while to draw me in, by the end of the play I was completely engaged in the twists and turns of the plot as hidden identities were revealed. If done properly, I believe this play could be excellent.