BWW Reviews: Camp Classic THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP Haunts Playhouse on Park

 The Mystery of Irma Vep
by Charles Ludlam
Directed by Peter James Cook
at Playhouse on Park, 244 Park Street in West Hartford through January 29
www.playhouseonpark.org

Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre gave anarchic camp a hip cache and an Off-Broadway berth from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.  Drawing equally from low humor and a high literary pedigree, the Ridiculous Theatre Company became an underground sensation that crossed into the mainstream with Ludlam’s 1984 masterpiece The Mystery of Irma Vep, currently running in revival at West Hartford’s Playhouse on Park through January 29.

Subtitled “A Penny Dreadful” (a lurid pulp thriller), this cross-dressing comedy coopts Victorian melodrama, gothic horror tropes and Daphne DuMaurier’s classic Rebecca.  Peppered with references to Shakespeare and Ibsen, the play is a quick-change tour-de-force for the two actors who play the eight roles.  Mashing up vampires, werewolves, mummies and spiritualism, Ludlam concocted a truly ridiculous story that makes little sense while mainly adhering to the Hitchcockian plot of Rebecca.

In Irma Vep, Lord Edgar Hillcrest has brought his new bride back to his ancestral home Mandacrest on the bleak moors of England.  Enid, the new Lady Hillcrest, must contend with the bitter maid Jane, the hunchbacked groundskeeper Nicodemus, and the omnipresent portrait of the previous lady of the manse, the eponymous Irma Vep.  The twisted Hillcrest family history is a murderous mystery to be unraveled by Enid, as long as she can avoid being attacked by a vampire, a werewolf and a knife-wielding psycho who may or may not be her predecessor. 

Any Hartford-area production of The Mystery of Irma Vep has to compete with the memory of the pitch-perfect 2004 Hartford Stage production helmed by the company’s former Artistic Director Michael Wilson.  Playhouse on Park’s take on Irma Vep, directed by Peter James Cook, is serviceably funny, but fails to tap into the campy excesses of this penny dreadful.

The story is secondary to the comic and technical achievements required to make the show successful.  Ludlam’s central comic device is the numerous quick changes that allow the two performers – PoP Artistic Director Sean Harris and Actor’s Equity member Rich Hollman – to play multiple characters.  A well-paced production can find Lady Enid leaving the stage and reemerging seconds later as Nicodemus.  Some of the changes can be as quick as 3 to 5 seconds.  The Playhouse on Park Irma Vep has not quite nailed the rapid-fire switcheroos that provide much of the humor.

The play is wordy with very smart references existing alongside deliciously naughty bits.  Harris and Hollman have mastered the text handily, but have not yet mined all of the humor that Ludlam has deployed.  The elements of over-the-top Victorian melodrama are not taken to their hilarious extremes.  Hopefully, as the complicated changes speed up and the actors become more comfortable with their respective roles, the production will have a chance to make the most of the laughs that resides in the script.

Harris proves himself to be the more capable comic actor making more of his silly roles as Lady Enid, Nicodemus and the sultry Pev Amri.  Hollman makes a fine matinee-idol Lord Edgar, but misses the tart fun to be found in the snotty Mrs. Danvers-esque Jane Twisden.  They have a great deal of fun playing their respective parts, but the campy drag sequences fail to reach the high-heeled heights found in a top-shelf production of Irma Vep.  There are delights, particularly the dulcimer duet performed by Hollman and Harris.

The set designed by Randall Parsons allows for the necessary elements required for the actors to escape through one door only to reemerge on the opposite side of the stage in a different part.  The costumes by Erik Kacmarcik are fine for the male roles, but are not flouncy enough for the Victorian excesses of Lady Enid.  The female costumes in particular make their quick-change Velcro seams too obvious and oftentimes become undone, exposing the men’s costumes lurking underneath.  Pronounced makeup for the actors would have provided greater opportunity for manic mugging and might have helped the actors pump up their characterizations.  The lack of a credited sound designer becomes obvious when moments begging for melodramatic underscoring, particularly the play’s finale, are oddly silent.

Playhouse on Park’s The Mystery of Irma Vep is not boring by any means, but lacks zip and manic energy.  Hopefully as the production heads into its final week, the cast will relax into the text and quick-change demands enough to allow themselves and the audience to have more frightful fun.

Photo of Sean Harris and Rich Hollman by Rich Wagner.

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