Fine Steel Beam cast mines menace in 'Veronica's Room'

Never talk to strangers. That's one of several lessons one can draw from “Veronica's Room,” the 1973 psychological thriller by Ira Levin currently running at Steel Beam Theatre. Another might be that no good deed goes unpunished.

But really this convoluted drama by the author of the mystery thriller “Deathtrap” and the novels “Rosemary's Baby” and “The Stepford Wives” is more about delivering chills than conveying a message.

Unfortunately, a convoluted back story and questionable motivation bedevil this examination of identity, deception, fantasy, obsession and psychosis whose unsettling revelations may challenge some Steel Beam subscribers.

“I don't want to give (our audiences) pablum,” said artistic director and co-star Donna Steele. She says the response to “Veronica's Room” has been both positive and negative.

“Welcome to theater,” she said, chuckling. “You can't please everybody all the time.”

No, but Steel Beam's revival is pretty good. The cast of director Marge Uhlarik-Boller's nicely paced production is among the theater's strongest. The acting is solid and will likely improve over the course of the run as actors settle into their roles and gain control of the occasional errant accent.

For now, however, the production needs to raise the stakes and offer more chills to reflect the “quietly looming menace in which anything could happen to anyone at any time,” which is how New York Times writer Margalit Fox described the playwright in his 2007 obituary.

For that to happen, Uhlarik-Boller and her cast must establish a more pronounced sense of dread, particularly in the second act.

The action unfolds in 1973, in a bedroom at a stately manor outside Boston tended by elderly Irish caretakers Maureen and John, disarmingly played by Steele and the avuncular Larry Boller.

By chance, the couple encounter Boston University coed Susan (cute-as-a-button Crystal Skipworth) at a restaurant where Susan is on a first date with Larry (a nicely detached Jackson Schultz). They are immediately taken with the pretty stranger who they insist resembles a woman named Veronica, daughter of the family they once served, who was in her early 20s when she died of tuberculosis nearly 40 years earlier.

Maureen and John convince Susan and the reluctant Larry to return with them to the estate where they show Susan a photograph of her doppelgänger. The couple then ask a favor of the young woman. Will she dress up as the late Veronica and meet with Veronica's younger sister Cissy, whose mind is failing and whose body is wracked with cancer? The couple explain that the sisters had been estranged at the time of Veronica's death. They insist a “reunion” would allow Cissy to make amends and die peacefully.

“It's not good to play along with somebody's delusions,” says Susan. “It just makes them more dependent.”

Although she hesitates initially, Susan ultimately consents to the charade. To reveal more would spoil the ending — which despite the roundabout route it took to get there elicited gasps from the opening-night crowd.

Skipworth is very good as a woman who agrees to a favor, then finds herself in the middle of something sinister. The young actress ably conveys Susan's rising frustration, but the real peril of her situation gets lost in a lot of onstage scrambling. It wouldn't hurt to dial back the stage business and ratchet up the tension. Speaking of tension, it's particularly evident in the final, nightmarish tableau which is among the production's finest, thanks to the expressive Steele. It's then that the terror of “Veronica's Room” truly hits home.