Switching back and forth through several decades, as the main character tries to recall events from his distant childhood and youth, The Darkening Sky explores the disappearance of two women in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. It sounds promising, but this noir-ish story doesn’t work well as a play, at least not this one written and directed by Richard Murphet. Heavy on narration, and with impressionistic black-and-white film in the background, it’s crying out to be a book or film.

Edwina Wren (Heather), Brian Lipson (James) and Mark Tregonning (Ray) in The Darkening Sky. Image © Chelsea Neate.

The two narrators of this Theatre Works/Victorian Theatre Company co-production are in the present: septuagenarian James, whose haunted, sometimes poetic monologues recall contemporary literary fiction; and Tony, a private investigator. He’s like a modern Melbourne take on one of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled private dicks, who successfully jumped from page to screen.

With a couple of murky characters perhaps misdirecting him, Tony is working on a 1980s cold case: the disappearance of a young woman called Chantal. She was the girlfriend of James,...