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Stage Review: Actors take farcical twists and turns in 'The Mystery of Irma Vep'
Friday, May 05, 2000 By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic
Batting her eyelashes with the force of copter blades, Lady Enid turns her spotlight eyes toward the audience and simpers, "Somehow, it doesn't make any sense."
Funnily enough, it does. You can actually follow the plot of City Theatre's "The Mystery of Irma Vep" if you just stop laughing long enough to note its tortured twists and turns. Along with his many other skills, the late Charles Ludlam -- author of 29 plays before he died of AIDS in 1987, age only 44 -- was fiendishly logical, a student of classical dramaturgy who knew how to frame his farces with classical steel.
Just how great a student he was of the classics is also apparent in his affectionate but impish plundering of shelves full of them. The result is a dense texture of parodic themes, plot elements, speeches and tag lines, so many intimations of familiarity that you're bound to feel that you'd actually seen "Irma Vep" before.
Maybe you have -- the Public Theater did it in 1988. But more likely, you'll be responding to memories of "Rebecca," "Wuthering Heights" and a lot of Shakespearean tragic blunderers. The cannier may pick up on the Ibsen, while the campier will doubtless register the B-movie allusions.
But this is all head-trip stuff. Before he was a logician or parodist, Ludlam was above all a man of the theater. A wonderfully resourceful comic actor, he wrote "Irma Vep" mainly for himself, and the result is comic delight.
If you need a single over-riding reason to see this silly parodic farce subtitled "a penny dreadful," let it be to watch Mark Chambers and Joe Schulz survive the Olympic-level decathlon of actors' challenges. When they lie exhausted at the end of a rollicking curtain call that ends two frantic hours of quick-change mayhem, it's not just shtick -- Schutz says he's already lost 16 pounds, and he barely has them to lose.
These two, you see, play all six major characters, plus a few walk-ons. The logical corollary is that some characters can never appear on stage together, but damned if they don't seem to pull it off, especially in a couple of lovingly melodramatic fights-to-the-death.
Savoring this quick-change artistry is half the fun of "Irma Vep." You tingle with anticipation as Chambers exits stage left as the fluttery Enid and, even while her voice and presence still hover just behind that door, enters almost simultaneously upstage as the slovenly swineherd Nicodemus.
The story? Well, as I say, the plot is perfectly/intricately clear if you want it to be. Newly married to Lord Edgar, the controversial Egyptologist, Lady Enid arrives at a Mandercrest still under the spell of his first wife, Irma Vep, and still haunted by one or two (it's an important plot point) Victors who prowl the moors. Lycanthrophy is feared, not to mention vampires (study that title name, hint, hint) and there are also the mysteries of Egyptian tombs and of the elderly retainer, Jane, who may not be the loyal servant that she never really convinces you she ever was.
Chambers handles the roles Ludlam wrote for himself -- Nicodemus, Enid, Alcazar and Pev Amri (that name again!) -- and though I revere Ludlam's memory, I must say Chambers measures up well to this high standard. His voice is his great ally, a magnificent instrument able to burrow into the earth itself. Enid flounces with globe-circling abandon and Nicodemus has Shakespearean bravado. All Chambers lacks is a touch of what Ludlam alone could do, where right in the middle of outrageous camp he would also show a glimpse of a real passion like tremulous hope or shattering regret.
Local favorite Schulz handles the second banana roles of Jane and Lord Edgar and there's nothing secondary at all about his fine comic work. Indeed, Jane, with her shifty eyes, expressive chins and pettish hands comes close to stealing the show. (But why doesn't Schulz honor the Irish rhythms in her speech?) Lord Edgar is a preciously drawn dweeb in a big suit. Apparently the sunny cherub Schulz often plays needed only this exposure to the moors to turn deliciously devious.
Chambers makes the bolder choices, Schulz the subtler. The contrast heightens both.
Henry Heymann, Pittsburgher of yore, returns to design the jokey sets and props, and he is more than matched by the costumes of Lorraine Venberg. Lurid and elaborate as required, they also have to be extremely well built to take the quick-change stress.
All this talent notwithstanding, at 2 1/4 hours the play does occasionally sag. But never for long. I guess even laughter needs an occasional respite.
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WHERE: City Theatre, 13th and Bingham, South Side.