Searching for dirty secrets in dirty ways on “Paradise Key.”

Review by Jeffrey Day.

“Paradise Key” by Dean Poynor, the annual new play at Trustus Theatre, lays out an intriguing scenario that covers familiar ground and has a production that loses focus during the second act.

The play is set on a remote Florida island in the early 1950s where an aging, former Nazi doctor has been whisked for interrogation by a young CIA agent. The doctor has hidden away with his secret in Argentina and now the Americans have come for it in the shape of a cocksure agent who has bought into Cold War rhetoric hook, line and sinker. It’s just the two of them in a barren room, with a bare light bulb above and the sound of the ocean in the background.

The playwright grew up in Columbia, was an actor at Trustus for several years, lives in New York, and has won a great deal of acclaim for his work. And one can see why. He’s a master at tricky dialogue and building tension. He has also done his homework, laying out infectious disease information in a believable but accessible manner. Several times during the play the actors have monologues they give directly to the audience and these are some of the best moments of the play.

Alex Smith as the interrogator David is appropriately earnest and gives a sense that the agent is in over his head. He has a sadistic streak, which he tries his best to show that he disdains, but we wonder if he really does.

Larry McMullen as the doctor brings a stubborn resolve to the character, enhanced by his bushy white hair and hangdog look.

In the play, the disease – polio – becomes a metaphor for the sickness, such as racial impurity, that the Germans attempted to remove from their world. How they went about this most of us know – torture, medical experiments, genocide. But the good German doctor says the horrible things he did were justified for the greater good. This topic has been covered in dozens of plays, movies and books for decades.

The bigger point of the play is that David, and by extension the U.S. government, is doing the same sort of thing in its methods of getting what it wants. While that is a timely topic in this an era of water boarding, indefinite incarceration and extraordinary rendition, it feels like a stretch.

As the plays continues some facts emerge that are a bit too convenient – such as why the doctor wanted to find a polio vaccine in the first place.

During the second act, things get messy and hard to follow mainly because McMullen appears to have forgotten half of his lines. When finally revealed the secret doesn’t sound any worse than what we already know, but that may simply be because it was so hard for the audience to get there.

The play is directed simply and clearly by artistic director Jim Thigpen. The show was to have opened last weekend, but an illness delayed it, so it runs only through Saturday.

As it is, it still isn’t ready, but even with problems, nearly all these new plays are worth doing and seeing. Including this one.

Additional performances of “Paradise Key” are at 7:30 Thursday, Aug. 12 and 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 13 and Saturday, Aug. 14. For reservations call the Trustus Theatre box office at 254-9732.