The Mystery of Irma Vep
If eight actors played the eight roles in Charles Ludlam's camp homage to things that go bump, the show would move faster but would be less funny. Having only two actors become men, women, a mummy, and a werewolf - in seconds, it seems - gives it more danger than the script's deliberately concocted shenanigans. The question isn't so much who killed Irma Vep, or young Victor, but rather: can the performers dash off as one character, return as another, and hit their marks? John Cariani and Jeffrey M. Bender quick-change Jenny Mannis's Victorian couture (twice as fast in Act 2, sometimes within ten seconds, though momentum wanes every time one walks offstage) and handle their various parts capably. Cariani's especially good as Jane, a maid with the sweetness of a squeezed lemon; and Bender's switch from Nicodemus, the hunchbacked moon-gazer, to Lady Enid Hillcrest is so stark it prompts more than one double-take. Paul Peterson's expert background music and dark and stormy sounds are top shelf. To use Ludlam's favorite word, Vep is deliberately "ridiculous." Taken in that spirit, it can entertain.
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, September 6, 2009
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Tuesdays, 7pm |
| Wednesdays, 7pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 2pm & 8pm |