Silver Dagger

Ian C. Nelson is assistant director of libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan and director of La Troupe du Jour, Regina Summer Stage.

David French is one of Canada’s most distinguished and popular
playwrights, author of such celebrated works as Leaving Home, Of the
Fields, One Crack Out, and Salt Water Moon. Having achieved great
popular success with Jitters (a kind of Canadian version of Noises Off,
falling into the ever-popular genre of plays that give audiences a peek
behind the scenes of theatre), he appears with Silver Dagger to have
taken up the thriller model of Ira Levin (Deathtrap) and Anthony Shaffer
(Sleuth), replete with multiple sting operations, disguises, and murders
both real and false.

This play boasts enough mayhem, intrigue, and twists of plot to shock
and thrill any audience. French shows himself to be as clever as the
most seasoned author of detective fiction, neatly tying off the ends of
each thread by the final blackout. The weakest point of the plot is the
central premise: that an independently rich specialist in the genre of
detective fiction would need and covet a promotion to full professor to
such a degree that she would remain party (as a witness) to murder from
the beginning to end of the play. Or perhaps not. ... The play has
enough Canadian references to satisfy any xenophobe.