Theatre in Review: Murder for Two (New World Stages)

	Jeff Blumenkrantz and Brett Ryback. Photo Joan Marcus

As Stephen Sondheim said, you gotta get a gimmick. Hence, Murder for Two, which could be subtitled "a musical stunt." A sort-of spoof of the old locked-room genre of mysteries, it features a young policeman investigating the killing of Arthur Whitney, "great American novelist," at a surprise party. The kicker is, the policeman, Marcus, is played by Brett Ryback, and all the suspects are played by Jeff Blumenkrantz; each man provides piano accompaniment for the other.

The suspects include the victim's wife, Dahlia, an aging, and remarkably grief-free, Southern belle; Barrette, an enigmatic ballet dancer; Murray and Barb, a squabbling married couple; Dr. Griff, the victim's psychiatrist; and Steph, the victim's niece, a winsome young psychology student. Also in the lineup is a 12-member boys' choir, which in fact has only three members. (Don't think too hard about that; nobody else did.) Don't be surprised if you have difficulty sorting out these characters; the libretto, by Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair, doesn't provide any of them with decent entrances, and, aside from a few key gestures -- for example, Barrette is always striking dance poses and Dahlia always wears glasses -- in terms of creating distinct characters, Blumenkrantz's skill is taxed to the limit. Each character has a funny voice, each one more grating than the next, but nevertheless they all blur together.

With a setup that is too generic to really qualify as satire, and no real comedic point of view, Murder for Two is meant to be pure vaudeville, its amusement generated by watching Ryback and Blumenkrantz put themselves through the punishing paces of the convoluted script. The actors move fast, but their gags are lame. "You've never been able to deal with the fact that I got class," says Barb. Murray replies, "I wouldn't call Weight Watchers a class, more of a program." All of Whitney's books are drawn from life, with titles to match; Steph says, "I even like his story, My Niece is a Dumb Grad Student Who Asks Too Many Questions" Dahlia, denouncing that "hussy" Barrette, says, "She said she was fermilliar [sic] with my husband! I thought so, especially those nights when she joined us in bed. But this confirms it." And then there's the exchange "You might want to call your lawyer, doctor." "My lawyer doctor?"

There's plenty more where that came from, and if you feel that you haven't been getting enough corn in your diet, Murder for Two may be just the thing. Most of the time, however, it is just plain murder. Scott Schwartz's too-frantic direction seems designed to hustle everyone past the worst of the jokes, but this strategy makes the show even more exhausting than it might be. Ryback and Blumenkrantz give it everything they've got, attacking the stage like entrants in the New York Marathon, but too often they send signals of desperation rather than delight.

It's never a good sign when the songs in a musical seem beside the point, but in Murder for Two, the numbers are mostly stand-alone comic interludes that don't really advance the story or fill out the characters. The songs -- music by Kinosian and lyrics by Blair -- do show a certain technical flair, particularly in the number "We Seen a Lot Woise," in which the choirboys detail the trouble they've seen. ("We spent a night trapped in Ikea once/Beside a kid with diarrhea once/We saw a show called Mamma Mia! once/And still we're somehow smilin'!") But we'll have to wait for their next show to get a better read on what they can really do.

And there almost certainly will be a next show. Honesty compels me to note that Murder for Two was acclaimed in its initial Chicago production, that the New York Times' Charles Isherwood, of all people, was charmed by it when it played uptown last summer, and, at the performance I attended, many in the audience seemed positively enchanted by all the running around. Taken as a kind of parlor game, in which the fun comes from seeing if Ryback and Blumenkrantz will make it to the finish line without fainting, Murder for Two seems to provide a certain amount of uncomplicated fun for uncomplicated audiences.

Certainly, Schwartz has provided a slick production, with Beowulf Boritt's old-style theatre set, rich in paneled wood and Tivoli lights, Jason Lyons' colorful lighting, and Jill BC Du Boff's encyclopedic array of sound effects. (At times, Murder for Two seems almost like an old-time radio play.) There is also a charming post-show recital, where Ryback and Blumenkrantz perform a four-handed piece, making good use of the pistol-finger technique popularized by Chico Marx.

If you can find your way into the hermetically sealed world of silliness that is Murder for Two, I suppose you might have a decent time. If not, you're likely to feel as trapped as the suspects in Arthur Whitney's murder.--David Barbour