The plot may be a train wreck, but there is fun on the ride as the Elden Street Players lampoon Victorian melodrama as well as classic suspense and horror films with their manic production of Charles Ludlam's spoof, "The Mystery of Irma Vep."
Ludlam tossed just about everything he could think of into this comedy, which has become a cult classic in the two decades since it premiered off-Broadway. There's literary parody, groan-inducing puns, spicy double-entendres (most of which probably aren't grasped by the children in attendance), bits of old vaudeville routines, genuinely clever satire, cinematic allusions and sight gags.
The plot, such as it is, combines elements of the classic suspense film "Rebecca" and those wonderful Universal horror flicks of the 1930s. There are even allusions to "Wuthering Heights." The audience is treated to dark and stormy nights, vampires, werewolves, an Egyptian mummy that reanimates as a seductive princess, a portrait that does tricks, a deformed servant and a scary housekeeper in a remote mansion. It's as if Ludlam was cleaning out the odds and ends of his psychic closet, the eclectic collection of an eager, active mind, before illness and death claimed him.
The ridiculous plot, with several barely connected storylines, is scarcely worth mentioning. The value of the play is in the tour de force performances of two actors who play all eight parts. Without this intensely demanding and difficult stunt, there wouldn't be much here, but, fortunately for Elden Street, the duo ably pulls it off. And that's not just a reference to the wooden leg of one of the characters.
Director Bruce Follmer chose two newcomers to the Herndon theater company, actors who obviously don't mind flying high without a safety net. Nano Gowland and Casey Jones both turn in superbly timed, colorfully comic performances as they rapidly change costumes, wigs, sexes and dialects, all the while remembering huge amounts of tricky dialogue. Here, Gowland displays more versatility and deeper projection of character than has been evident in his previous theater work. Jones is superbly entertaining as he rapidly transitions between the wretched, peg-legged servant Nicodemus and grand dame Lady Enid, characters so different from each other that the audience audibly thrills to each instant change. Jones is a master of the comic accent, beginning with accurately detailed renditions bespeaking both geography and class distinctions, and then embellishing them just enough for maximum comedic effect.
Lady Enid is the new bride of Mandercrest's master, Egyptologist Lord Edgar Hillcrest, who is portrayed by Gowland with such devotion to playing it straight, if perhaps a bit overripe, that it seems all the funnier in the midst of the mayhem. Follmer only cheats a little, using several prerecorded exchanges of dialogue broadcast from backstage as the actors undergo especially difficult costume changes. Otherwise, they're on their own, with Jones at one point hilariously handling a conversation between two of his characters by frenetically hopping about, partly obscured by the set. Ludlam has built in several bits that play as "mistakes," allowing the actors to appear as if they are ad-libbing their way around them, which, after all, is fun for an audience that feels it is experiencing something special and unexpected. At least one pun is so egregious that a scripted quip anticipates and responds to loud audience groans.
Joe Schubert's main set (of two), a country estate interior, resembles a black and white cartoon from Edward Gorey, the illustrator whose drawings combine macabre, menacing imagery with humor (including the animation that opens PBS's "Mystery!" program). This lets audience members know as soon as they enter the theater that they are in for cartoonish good fun, which is exactly what they get.
"The Mystery of Irma Vep" continues through April 16 at the Industrial Strength Theatre, 269 Sunset Park Dr., Herndon. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 7 p.m. on April 10 and 8 p.m. on April 14. For tickets and information, call 703-481-5930 or visit www.eldenstreetplayers.org.
