The Da Vinci Code
Adapted by Rachel Wagstaff & Duncan Abel
Based on the Novel by Dan Brown
Palo Alto Players
When the mystery thriller movie, The Da Vinci Code, opened in 2006, it was largely panned by most critics, laughed at during its Cannes Festival premiere, and landed on many “Worst Of” lists for movies of that year. Yet its opening weekend saw throngs globally rush to see the movie based on Dan Brown’s popular novel, awarding star Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard their best domestic film openings ever. The same movie that was banned in many countries, condemned by the Vatican, and protested in its theatre openings through the U.S. for what both some Christians and some Muslims saw as blatant and serious religious blasphemy grossed the second highest box office total worldwide in 2006.
Murders, deceptions, false identities, and family mysteries combine with secret and warring, ancient religious societies involving the likes of Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Victor Hugo; the famed Knights Templar; and current Catholic Church clergy combine to produce a complicated series of crimes. Involved also are ancient symbols embedded in famous art and tombs, messages that are anagrams to hide their real meaning, and number sequences that must be rearranged to reveal a necessary clue.
Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel have sifted through all the myriad of twists and turns, dead-ends, and surprise revelations that pack the original novel and the resulting film to adapt this complicated, controversial story for the stage. Palo Alto Players takes the daring step to open the West Coast premiere of this 2022-London-premiering stage version, producing a lean-in compelling and quite comprehensible two hours, thirty minutes of a story whose many twists and turns could easily leave a live audience confused and lost. PAPlayers’ The Da Vinci Code should more than please any of the novel’s eighty million readers as well as introduce its thrills, suspense, and fantastical conclusions to novices like myself who arrive with little-to-no prior exposure to this deadly, international quest for the legendary Holy Grail.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 3.5 E
The Da Vinci Code continues through February 1, 2026, in in a two-hour, thirty-minute (with one intermission) West-Coast-premiere production by Palo Alto Players at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA. Tickets are available online at www.paplayers.org or by calling the Box Office at 650-329-0891.
Photo Credit: Scott Lasky
