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Stage Review: 'Musical Comedy Murders' has fun with '40s cliches
Tuesday, October 24, 2000 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It was a dark and stormy night ...
Well, OK, it's snowing. The creative team behind a successful Broadway musical are gathered at the secluded mansion of a possible investor for a backer's audition in anticipation of their next collaboration. There's hushed mention of "the incident" that closed their previous show -- a "stage door slasher" who slit the throats of several showgirls.
Now the same writer, composer, director, backer, principal cast and a few others huddle over a piano envisioning their next big show. The wind howls. The radio reports that the snowstorm has blocked the road, forcing everyone to spend the night. The clock strikes 12. The lights flicker and go dark. When they return, one of the guests is dead.
If you've zeroed in on the laundry list of cliches that stick out like a sore thumb, you're right on target and getting the big picture. John Bishop and Ted Simon's "The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940" is one big run-on sentence of familiar scenarios, obvious options, cliffhangers and one-liners. Moving bookcases lead to secret passageways. Women slip down to the basement to check out strange sounds. People aren't really who they appear to be and in the end the good guy gets the girl. It's a mystery that's perfectly predictable, absolutely unoriginal and consciously cliched.
Still, it's no mystery why producer George Jaber of theater the department of Community College of Allegheny County, South Campus, would stage it. Because more than anything else, it's fun.
To start, the only thing that's musical about "The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940" is its premise. Simon's lyrics are wry, witty and completely incidental to the story. Bishop's script is rife with puns and verbal anachronisms that don't reflect the way real people talk -- even in the 1940s. Director J.R. Hall seeded his cast with several unusual choices and allows the players to inject their personalities into the stereotypical roles.
Pittsburgh standup comic David Kaye, shorn of his trademark big hair, is hysterical as a stand-up who is accidentally booked at the doomed backer's audition. His character is an endless well of rim-shot one-liners and his separation from the former collaborators helps the audience to sort out all the relationships.
Kaye's timing was impeccable on opening night, but the whole production seemed a half-step off, robbing him of the laughs he deserved. It's no cliche that the show will most likely grow tighter after the passing of those first-night jitters.
Mary Brady has a lot of fun in her role as stately Elsa Von Grossenkneuten, the rich widow and frequent arts patron who has lured the artsy types out of the city. It's no coincidence that they're the creators of the musical that died with the murders of its cast. CCAC regular Garbie Dukes has a dual role that is revealed as the story unwinds, as does Tawnya Hladik, who plays overlapping parts with great credibility.
Rick Sallinger plays a single role with two -- make that three -- personas. Stage veteran John Stetor is convincing in a supporting role that grows to become crucial to the story.
The ingenue -- there has to be an ingenue in a '40s murder mystery -- is played with period panache by Jill Black. She's a natural and it's surprising to learn that this show marks the stage debut of the CCAC junior.
Nancy Mimless and Lynn Marie Woshner, in her 17th CCAC production, provide colorful characters, and company mainstay John Burja is a scream as the prototypical gay designer. Political correctness hadn't been invented in the prejudiced 1940s. Presented in period, "Murder Comedy Murders" flexes many muscles that would be inappropriate in another context.
Hall, Mondo Snyder and Dennis Weis surround the cast with a clever and functional set that accommodates Bishop's demands for a moving fireplace, sliding walls, secret levers and slamming doors. It's a familiar setting that looks exactly like every drawing room in every prewar murder mystery ever made.
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Where: CCAC South Campus Theatre, 1750 Clairton Road, West Mifflin