Chicago-set murder-mystery premiere crackles

By this point in her redoubtable career, it's easy to imagine Barbara Robertson playing Gertrude.

Hamlet, not so much.

Except that the exceptional Robertson does exactly that in “The Detective's Wife,” an engrossing murder-mystery by Arlington Heights native Keith Huff in its world premiere at Writers' Theatre.

More accurately, she plays a female version of Shakespeare's melancholy, manic prince as imagined by Huff, whose play follows 2007's stellar “A Steady Rain” — a smash hit that had an extended Chicago run before opening on Broadway in 2008 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. “The Detective's Wife” marks the second of a proposed trilogy centered on Chicago cops that began with “A Steady Rain” and concludes with “Tell Us of The Night,” one of eight plays to be developed in July during the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwright's Conference.

The one-actor play centers around Robertson's Alice: the wife of dedicated Chicago homicide detective Jim Conroy, mother of two adult children and a voracious reader of mystery novels, whose hobby has by her own estimation occupied 12 years of her life.

We meet Alice — the proprietor of a frame shop — in her upper-middle-class home on Chicago's Northwest Side, where she describes for us her husband's recent murder in the alley behind a faded movie palace called the Wonderland. The police have no leads, but Alice — who “never bought easily into conspiracy theories” — insists her husband's death is connected to the sexual assault and murder of three young boys, a cold case several decades old that Jim had recently reopened. (The reference is to an actual crime, the 1955 murders of John and Anton Schuessler and Bobby Peterson, which went unsolved for 40 years.)

The shock of her husband's death at first robs Alice of her voice — a reference to Hamlet's impotence and inability to avenge his father's death and perhaps the mute protagonist in “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” David Wroblewski's beguiling 2008 retelling of the tragedy. Like Hamlet, Alice encounters the ghost of her husband, whose demise followed that of a half-dozen other detectives who worked on the case, all of whom met with untimely and tragic ends.

Alice — who at one point does channel her inner Gertrude — is diagnosed with depression and prescribed an array of meds. That doesn't stop her pursuit of the truth, but it leads to a fundamental question: Is Alice depressed, delusional or is she right?

Huff keeps us guessing. In a play that is part mystery, part true crime and part supernatural tale (which tips its hat to Henry James), Huff's storytelling skills are considerable even if he does force the frame metaphor. And he has crafted a likable, somewhat eccentric amateur sleuth in Alice, a well-educated classicist with a sly sense of humor who is not at all the “shrinking violet housewife” she describes.

Less gritty than its predecessor and peppered with local references to the Des Plaines River, Lutheran General Hospital and Mario Tricoci salons, “The Detective's Wife” is a vivid examination of grief, the need for security and the importance of actively participating in one's life.

Staged in the intimate backroom of a Glencoe bookstore, “The Detective's Wife” unfolds on Kevin Depinet's comfortably overcrowded set dominated by towering stacks of books and accented by Mike Tutaj's projections.

Straightforward, economical direction by Gary Griffin ensures not a single look or gesture is wasted. But much of the show's success rests on the slender shoulders of Robertson — who makes credible Alice's transformation from sorrowful widow to empowered woman. It's a rich, self-aware performance. Given the demands of a one-person show, it certainly warrants the tour-de-force description. But the power of Robertson's pitch-perfect performance has to do with its restraint and with the connection — absolutely palpable — she makes with audience members, drawing each one into the world of Chicago cops and the wives who love them.

“The Detective's Wife”

★ ★ ★

<b>Location: </b>Writers' Theatre at Books on Vernon, 664 Vernon Ave., Glencoe, (847) 242-6000 or <a href="http://www.writerstheatre.org" target="_blank">writerstheatre.org</a>

<b>Showtimes:</b> 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 6 p.m. Sunday through July 31

<b>Running time:</b> About 1 hour, 45 minutes, with intermission

<b>Tickets: </b>$50 to $60

<b>Parking: </b>Street parking

<b>Rating: </b>For adults; strong language, mature subject matter