By Mary O’KEEFE

“You Can Call Me…. Flemming,” a play by Sam Bodrick, is in its last week at Pasadena City College Sexson Auditorium.

The play follows Henry Flemming who has a successful business that he hates. For reasons only a middle aged man can understand he sells his lucrative business and buys a questionable detective firm.

His life transforms from the mundane to a world of intrigue, murder and mayhem. All the while his wife is supportive and a bit clueless as she answers every anxiety with an exotic cocktail. Although he faces thugs with guns and dames with extremely tight clothing as he works through his first case his real nemesis is his neighbor Stan Spencer a psychiatrist.   Stan is the type of neighbor that expands his world by living in yours. Now Henry faces not only the danger from his newly found profession but also has to fight off the instinct not to shoot Stan with his new real detective gun.

The play is a comedic spin on the Dashiell Hammett noir detective series where men were men, dames were dames and a good wife always met you at the door with a cocktail.

Directed by Duke Stroud.  Last performance is tonight at 8 p.m.

  PCC, theatre