This year’s Theatre Guild of Ancon’s production of "Laura" was a blast from the past and a tribute to Panama’s English-language theater group’s roots. In October of 1951 this play was the Theatre Guild’s first production, with Stanley Fidanque playing the male lead. Fidanque played for and supported the Guild many more times over the decades, until he passed away a few months ago.

"Laura" wasn’t a new play then. In 1944, Variety magazine called it a "classic tale of suspense." In 1951, The Star & Herald, reviewing the Guild’s production, noted that the play "mixed Freud and the ways of the homicide squad."

Ah, but television culture has intervened to shape public ideas and expectations over the decades. Moreover, this play is being reviewed by the son of a mad scientist, a person who has made friends and served clients in a number of places of incarceration, a representative of a long line of bipolars who befriends other crazies and somebody who went to law school with homicide detectives and the police chief who had to deal with the Jeffrey Dahmer case.

You have to suspend disbelief for "Laura" to work as a police drama. This is not to say that the police department that drove Frank Serpico into exile, tortured Abner Louima and blew Amadou Diallo away wouldn’t have had detectives who drank on the job, became personally involved with the subjects of their investigations, misidentified or mishandled evidence and allowed third parties to contaminate a crime scene. But still, this is not a realistic depiction of New York’s finest and the bad guys they confront, now or then. We’re dealing with a slightly surreal work of fiction here.

The weaknesses of the play itself so noted in generations-later hindsight, we need to recognize the great strengths of this production.

First, Catherine Hopkins directed, co-produced and played many other behind-the-scenes roles, and made it all come off. Her outstanding contribution this time was in the field of set design. Rogelio Sánchez actually built the set, and several others contributed artwork, but it was the set designer’s work that turned the little theater’s stage into a most believable woman of culture’s New York apartment of yesteryear.

Domingo de Obaldia, originally the understudy for the leading man, stepped in and put on a very good performance as a New York gumshoe. This was de Obaldia’s first theatrical performance in Panama, but he caught the acting bug while attending college in the United States.

Guild regular Ron Leggiere co-produced this work, designed the props, did some of the artwork for the set and most of all played the obnoxious Waldo Lydecker. According to Leggiere, it was hard playing such a pompous creep. He did it well, even as seen through the eyes of someone who tends to take the late Frank Zappa’s suggestion of creeping in the night and sleeping in a phone booth in the same light as the Tao.

Lara Petrosky de Saint Malo was the leading lady, with Cris Garza, Michael Henríquez, Kristina Janson and Diana Luz Parada in supporting roles. They are all veterans of Panama’s English-language theater, either with the Theatre Guild or the International School of Panama. All performed solidly on opening night.

The Theatre Guild of Ancon will be having a summer season of sorts this year, in the form of a Great American Playwrights Staged Reading Series. On June 5 it will be "Lemon Sky," on July 10 "Fool for Love" and on August 28 "Speed the Plow." Also in the little playhouse next to the PTJ’s morgue, the International School of Panama will be staging Shakespeare’s "Taming of the Shrew" on May 24 and 25.

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