Review: The Audience Helps to Decide if "Three Can Keep a Secret"

Three Can Keep a Secret

Written by Gregory Crafts

Directed by Richard Piatt

Presented by Theatre Unleashed and FRIGID New York at the wild project

195 E 3rd St., Manhattan, NYC

April 15-19, 2025

Sonny (Ryan Dylan Wargnier) and Moose (Gregory Crafts). From 2024 Hollywood Fringe production. Photo by Matt Kamimura,
Choice looms large in crime comedy Three Can Keep a Secret, from Los Angeles-based theater artist Gregory Crafts and one of 63 shows at the 2025 New York City Fringe Festival, which runs through April 20th across four venues in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn. With some "bad decisions" by one of the characters having set the plot in motion, not only must the rest of the characters reckon with a consequent series of choices and repercussions, but the audience too must decide at several points which path the show takes. For the characters, much of this decision-making reveals that they may not know those close to them as well as they thought, while for the audience, it is possible that the final vote might make you reflect on the moral compass of yourself and your fellow spectators, but it is almost certain that you will have fun in doing so.
Moose (Gregory Crafts), Mason (Sean Faye), and Sonny (Ryan Dylan Wargnier). From 2024 Hollywood Fringe production. Photo by Matt Kamimura,
In the California-set play's opening, Mason's (Sean Faye) friends Moose (playwright Gregory Crafts) and Sonny (Ryan Dylan Wargnier) arrive at Mason's place for a poker night, taking advantage of Mason's wife, Denise (Heather Lynn Smith) having gone out of town. When the game begins, Sonny becomes almost immediately infuriated with Mason, but while this may be indicative of Sonny's personality generally speaking, it is tied to a plan to murder Mason because of his "bad decisions"- which they rapidly do. This is not, however, the end of Faye's time on stage, as Mason becomes the production's ghostly emcee, managing the audience choice segments while also, smartly, giving Mason further character moments in those scenes. Just before the first of those audience choices, Sonny and Moose find out that Denise is returning unexpectedly, with, as we find out, her booze, sex, and poker-loving friend Julia (Courtney Sara Bell) in tow. Leaving the two men no time to stage the scene as a suicide, the impending arrival of these two assertive women sets the stage for an entertaining blend of farce and tension, not to mention some great fight choreography.
Sonny (Ryan Dylan Wargnier), Denise (Heather Lynn Smith), & Julia (Courtney Sara Bell). From 2024 Hollywood Fringe production. Photo by Matt Kamimura,
Wargnier makes a terrific self-interested murderer, and he and Crafts have some very funny exchanges as partners in crime who are less than fully in sync, while scenes between Crafts and Smith as people with more tying them to one another than we at first believe, give the show an emotional grounding that compels us to care about where the various character and audience choices lead. As Crafts and Smith's performances uncover hidden sides of tough-guy Moose and prickly Denise, they also complement the bemused and angry reactions of Faye's ghostly Mason, delivered from a blue-lit afterlife with the action around him generally frozen in place, which conflict with his determined cheerfulness in his task of involving the audience in the show. One imagines that the final choice made by that audience has the biggest impact on the narrative, but however satisfying one finds the result, one must also remember that it's only one ending among multiple possibilities, in one possible permutation of the show. So while, as most often in real life, the characters in Three Can Keep a Secret may not get any do-overs, as a spectator, you can.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

Comments

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