The Maltz Jupiter Theatre's production of Dial M for Murder — a mothballed murder mystery that was made into an unlikely 3-D movie by Alfred Hitchcock — was impeccably handsome. But it was also hopelessly embalmed in another time, with many of the actors failing to transcend 1950s mannequins. But as the film's chief antagonist, who is also, devilishly, its chief audience identifier, Todd Allen Durkin never seemed hamstrung by the antiquities of the source material. His emotional connection to this mannered snake — a once-successful tennis player who blackmails a former school chum into murdering his philandering wife — was so strong, so entrenched in contradictory textures, that his character psychology seemed more in tune with today's morally ambiguous antiheroes than the one-note evildoers who received their destined comeuppances in '50s potboilers like this. One minute he's seething with a mix of righteous anger and quivering fragility as he relates his wife's history of extramarital conduct; the next, he's combining smug satisfaction with barely contained panic as his perfect murder plot slips away from him like a toppled box of marbles. There seemed to be four or five characters in this single, thinly drawn archetype, and we couldn't help but admire the bastard.