Punch magazine once described John Bishop's farce, The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, as " a 42nd Street with corpses where the songs ought to be."
Another take on it would be to imagine Agatha Christie as publisher of Mad magazine.
Either description aptly describes the campy and relentless mayhem that took over the stage Monday night, as the Ottawa Little Theatre opened the curtain on its production - the last in their season of theatre about theatre - of Bishop's 1987 play.
A spoof not dissimilar to, say, Neil Simon's Murder By Death, The Musical Comedy Murders is a deliberate montage of every hokey plot device found in the genre, from the guests deviously invited to a snowstorm-secluded masion, to the sliding bookcases, hidden passageways, power outages, dead telephone lines and motives galore.
Everything, of course, seems innocent enough when a group of actors, a director, producer, songwriter, et al are invited to the home of theatrical benefactor Elsa Von Grossenknueten, under the guise of an audition for an upcoming Broadway production.
But wait. Weren't these all the same people who worked on Manhattan Holiday, a recent flop in which three chorus girls were murdered by the so-called Stage Door Slasher, heinous crimes that were never solved? And who is this scarfaced Irish tenor, Patrick O'Reilly, who speaks like a leprechaun but wears jackboots and knows a little too much of things German? Doesn't Groseenknueten's maid, Helsa, seem a little, well, manly? And what do you make of the flamboyant (we know what that means) pianist, Roger Hopewell, who once wanted the three then-alive showgirls fired?
But before you can start sussing out the suspects, they start dropping like 10 little Indians. Knives, swords, pistols and bourbon bottles get the workouts of their lives until, one by one, with bodies piling up in the snowbanks outside, the disguises and fake accents are dropped, to reveal (cue the scary music) the killer.
The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is light, easy fare; not brilliant by any stretch but loaded with enough puns, double entendres, spies, twins, cops, drunks and misplaced dramas to carry it for 2 1/2 hours. OLT's production is well-paced, while a number of the actors give solid performances.
Brian Cano, as Eddie McCuen, the third-rate comic who has no real business at the mansion, delivers a perfect tribute to Lou Costello. Hopewell, the gay songwriter and pianist, is turned to a tee by John Collins, while Pat Marsahll, as Hopewell's increasingly inebriated songwriter partner, lyricist Bernice Roth, somehow makes drunkenness endearing again.
The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 continues at Ottawa Little Theatre, 400 King Edward Ave., until June 14. Tickets, $15, for the 8 p.m. shows are available at the box office. For more infromation, call 233-8948.