Seven Keys to Baldpate
By Joe Adcock, P-I Theater Critic

It's better not to say much about a show that is all plot all the time -- "Seven Keys to Baldpate," for example. The play's entertainment value (which is considerable) lies in carefully plotted surprises that pop up about every seven minutes.

I guess it does no harm to mention a few details, however. Hallowell, the central character, is a novelist specializing in fraught thrillers. A friend bets him $15,000 that, slick though he is, Hallowell couldn't write a pulp-fiction opus in one day. So our author holes up in the remote, snowbound Baldpate Inn, a summer resort hotel owned by the friend, to see what he can come up with.

And then ...

Let's just say that lots of guns come into play. There's a sleazy developer and a corrupt politician and their respective goons. A bribe of $500,000 goes astray. A floozy shows up. A lovely young thing shows up. A widow shows up. A misanthropic hermit shows up. A rustic couple, the inn's caretakers, provide comic relief.

We'll let it go at that. Taproot Theatre's production of "Seven Keys to Baldpate" shows off playwright George M. Cohan's ingenuity to good advantage. Director Karen Lund sets a swift pace that keeps the innumerable inquiries and explanations from dragging. Toward the end of the show, a long spate of uninterrupted shouting becomes monotonously hectic. But most of the production is engaging.

As Hallowell, Bob Borwick is a true pulp writer's fantasy -- one minute terrified, the next tough and threatening, occasionally befuddled and klutzy but later suave and romantic.

Eleven supporting actors are vigorously picturesque.

Cohan adapted "Seven Keys to Baldpate" from a novel of the same name published in 1913. His dramatic version premiered the same year. It became the basis for no fewer than seven movies. Lund has brought the historical setting up to the 1950s, a good choice. The '50s film-noir, pulp-fiction details mesh well with all plot, all the time; sometimes sinister and sometimes funny.

Taproot is at 204 N. 85th St. "Seven Keys to Baldpate" runs there through June 15. Tickets $19-$32, pay what you can May 23; 206-292-2787 or taproottheatre.org.