Theatre in Review: The Mystery of Irma Vep (Red Bull Theatre/Lucille Lortel Theatre)

	Arnie Burton, Robert Sella. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Once more, darkness falls on Mandacrest. Fog creeps in. Wolves howl in the distance. Bursts of thunder and lightning shatter the calm. The stage is set for murder, mayhem, and some of the hammiest acting you've ever seen. Yes, The Mystery of Irma Vep is back.

One of the most delightful bits of nonsense to come out of Charles Ludlam's mind, this so-called "penny dreadful" begins with a Rebecca-like premise -- an unsuspecting woman arrives at her new husband's estate, only to discover a nest of intrigue and family secrets -- and folds into the narrative of the entire 1940s output of Universal Studios. There are bits of Gaslight, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, Jane Eyre, and any other gothic entertainment that you can think of. It's a delirious mash-up of horror movie clichés: a painting bleeds; a veiled stranger menaces the heroine; a wall panel slides open to reveal a prison cell; a side trip to Egypt features a flirtatious mummy newly liberated from her sarcophagus.

The kicker is, this grotesque cast of characters is played by a cast of two. Arnie Burton is Lady Enid Hillcrest, late of the stage and now uneasily ensconced in Mandacrest; Nicodemus Underwood, the Quasimodo-ish family factotum; the enigmatic Egyptian guide Alcazar; and Pev Amri, that remarkably lively mummy. His partner in theatrical crime is Robert Sella as Jane Twisden, the vengeful Cockney maid who is unnaturally devoted to the first Lady Hillcrest, and Lord Edgar, who establishes his macho bona fides in his first entrance, triumphantly wielding the enormous corpse of a wolf.

Both performers have plenty of pearly moments: Burton's Lady Enid enters her sitting room as if making her third curtain call, spinning around to show off her frock and grinning like an imbecile; as Alcazar, he removes a lit cigarette from under his fez, takes a few puffs, and replaces it, all with tremendous aplomb. (The fez has an air freshener for a tassel.) He also gets repeated laughs with an accent that can best be described as United Nations, and his sinister references to the "sar-co-PHAY-gus" in the "tomb," landing hard on the letter "b." As Nicodemus, he keeps adjusting his wooden leg, independent of any rules of anatomy, and executes a nifty erotic mummy dance. Best of all, he can provide poker-faced deliveries to lines such as, "It's a terrible thing to marry an Egyptologist, only to find that he is hung up on his mummy!" Sella also chews the scenery enthusiastically; as Jane, he puts all of his vocal firepower behind a line like "Mad? Mad? Perhaps I am. Love is a kind of madness. And hatred is a bottomless cup, and I will drink the dregs." (He's also a treat when Jane, musing on her employer's family line, says, "They've been descending for centuries."). Also as Jane, he delivers a big chunk of exposition while getting thoroughly drunk, carefully pronouncing each consonant in each word, whether it is silent or not. Both actors take part in an impromptu dulcimer concert, playing "The Last Rose of Summer," and, following the applause, offering a reprise.

Of course, the real fun involves the lightning-fast changes of character and costume that turn the play into a night-long marathon, fraught with comic peril. The transitions between Lady Enid, flouncing about in her voluminous gowns and the ogre-ish Nicodemus are especially amusing. In another, Nicodemus turns into a werewolf before our very eyes. Ludlum piles on the plot twists, forcing evermore-breathless changes, causing near-hysteria, on stage and off.

My one reservation about the Red Bull revival is that Burton and Sella are hard-working, intelligent, and thoroughly clever actors, while Ludlam and his co-star, Everett Quinton, were inspired clowns. Ludlam barely needed a script; as Lady Enid, he could do five minutes of simpering, annihilating the audience with laughter. But stars of his nature don't come along every day, and, under Quinton's authoritative direction, this is as close to a perfect Irma Vep as we are likely to get.

This includes John Arnone's scenery, which includes a sitting room dominated by gothic arches of various sizes and the interior of that tomb, and Ramona Ponce's costumes, which look as if they were heisted from the wardrobe room of a 19th-century actor-manager and his touring company. Peter West's lighting strikes all the right sinister notes, and Brandon Wolcott's sound mixes horror-movie music with appropriately eerie cues (chiming clocks, howling wolves, etc.).

Ludlam was a singular artist, a member of the downtown avant-garde of the '70s and '80s, yet in many ways closer in spirit to the great Broadway clowns like Bert Lahr and Phil Silvers and also to the great television sketch artists like Sid Caesar and Carol Burnett. Most of his prolific output may have been too closely tailored to the talents of himself and his Ridiculous Theatrical Company troupe. But The Mystery of Irma Vep has proven to be a keeper, a classic comedy premise that provides a playground for the right actors. And that's what this production so happily has. -- David Barbour