A Shot in the Dark, adapted for Broadway by Harry Kurnitz from Marcel Achard's Paris hit L'Idiote, combines bedroom farce with murder mystery. The sex and suspense are unevenly blended, but a sharpshooter cast, headed by Julie Harris and Walter Matthau, drills the evening acceptably full of laughs.
Julie is a chambermaid (Josefa) who is found in the nude (her favorite outfit) and unconscious, with only one accessory, a revolver. Beside her lies the dead body of her lover, a Spanish chauffeur who used to beat her "but never when he was drinking." They both worked for an aristocratic Paris banking family,...