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| Murder in Sandy: Staged and a Comic Delight posted on 02/01/2010
“The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940” is, as the title suggests, a comedy wrapped in a mystery.
But there is no mystery about the intentions of the 11-person ensemble cast that brings this play to the Mountain: energy and entertainment.
The play is running at the Sandy Actors Theatre – enigmatically huddled between the break in Hwy. 26 in downtown Sandy, behind a hardware store – and for a delightful couple hours sweeps us away from the leaden skies of Oregon winter and deposits us in another time and place: a mansion in Chappaqua, New York, in 1940.
It’s been said by great artists that there are three important tenants to staging a play: (1) keep sword play to a minimum; (2) ghosts are more difficult to stage than one thinks; and (3) make the exposition quick, simple, unrecognizable and entertaining.
Playwright John Bishop deftly held to the first two. There’s some knife wielding, but it’s minimal. A shadowy figure is hooded and cloaked in black, and quite believable.
However, Bishop struggles early in Act I (of two) with the exposition. Indeed, his task is daunting: introducing 11 characters is not a simple bit of writing business.
But you hang with it due to the skillful direction of James Bass and the delightful performances of three particular characters: Helsa Wenzel, played by Mary Margaret Casteneda, is the mansion’s maid and her Teutonic timbre is terrifically transmitted. Bernice Roth, played by Anita Clark, is one of two writers whose overwhelming intent to imbibe makes her delightful to watch. Roger Hopewell, played by Rhododendron Postmaster Tim Park, is the other writer and is hilarious as a fussy fidget overcome by the slasher mystery that unfolds later in Act I.
The play evolves around the notion that three women have been murdered in a previous play and all the people who have been invited to the Chappaqua mansion formed the creative team of that play. This “audition” is a setup to ferret out the murderer.
It’s a wacky group. Besides the maid and two writers, there’s the hostess, Elsa Von Grossenknueten (played by Erin Hickman); a police officer, unsuccessfully masquerading as a chauffeur, Michael Kelly (played by Rudy Wilson); a supposed Irish tenor, Patrick O’Reilly (played by Walter Hobbins); the director, Ken De La Maize (portrayed by Jim Bumgardner); a singer-dancer in disguise, Nikki Crandall (played to the hilt by Tora Holmes); a horrific comedian, Eddie McCuen (intentionally overplayed by Zachary Funk); the producer, Marjorie Baverstock (played by Melissa Swenson); and, of course, the stage door slasher.
The plot (and ensuing zany comedy and dizzy conversations – highlighted by Roth and Hopewell) picks up later in Act I with the maid’s unexplainable murder drawing into question every character’s character, the revelation of the labyrinth of hidden passageways in the mansion, and the connection between the characters and the previous murders.
Act II is a riotous delight. Murderous mayhem ensues, Roth finds solace and sad emptiness in the cognac bottle (used for temporarily subduing innocent victims), and Hopewell frets from one frenzy to another.
The mystery is eventually unraveled, but it’s almost unimportant. The audience is left with the marvelous experience of knowing each and every character and having lived for a few theatrical moments outside their own lives, thanks to the ensemble’s efforts, and exit the theatre under the winter skies, amble past the hardware store, and steer their cars back onto Hwy. 26 and the ordinary reality that they’ve been relieved of – if only for a couple, precious hours.
by Larry Berteau/MT
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