The first time I heard it the plot twist completely blindsided me.

A few thoughts:

- This play was based upon "The tragedy of the life raft" by Jacques Futrelle. Futrelle's play was another one which featured his character "the thinking machine" (I believe that guy was in the RMT's "The great brain" and maybe "The secret of the fifth bell"), but I thought it was wise of the scriptwriter not to put him in this one, and instead focus on Miss Harper as the detective.

- If anything, Norman Rose was almost too nice in this role. The tidbits of the story I linked to above made Peter Ordway seem more fiendish than he was in the play.

- What's that RMT play from 1982 you reviewed which was an absolutely sordid story with Rose playing an older Louisiana plantation owner who tries to forcibly win the heart of his stepdaughter or something like that? Rose's performance in that play was similar to this one, though his accent might have passed for northern Louisiana. In "The raft", I called his and Marian Seldes' accents "Brookly-sippian". (I love it when Rose says: "Uh, Walpole, leave me will ya?") Still, that's forgivable.

- The music...this play and an RMT play called "The captain of the Polestar"  have an interlude that could be called "trouble on the water". You hear it every time Rose's character has a flashback, and at the very end of Act 3. I heard it once used on the RMT play "The gratitude of the serpent". I like it a lot...piano with muted trumpets and muted trombones.

- As I've said before, I wonder if CBS would produce a play today that had no less than four pieces of scripture referred to as done in this one: Mark 8:34-38 ("What doth it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul"), Proverbs 11:4 ("Riches shall not profit in the day of revenge"), Timothy 6:10 ("Love of money is the root of all evil"), and Matthew 10:52 ("Those who live by the sword die by the sword").

- Mandel Kramer is always fun to listen to as a detective. (I think he played one in "The edge of night", a TV show that many RMT cast members were culled from. He was fun to listen to as the Jack Webb-esque detective in the RMT's "Cool Killer Carl".)