Throw logic and reason aside and enjoy Intiman's 33rd-season opener "The Mystery of Irma Vep" for what it is: a hilarious, gender-bending Gothic romp of anagrams and quick-changes that goes from silly to sillier.
The idea is to have fun. The playwright did. The actors do. And so does the audience.
Written in 1984 by Charles Ludlam for his notorious Off-Off Broadway troupe The Ridiculous Theatre, "Irma Vep" blatantly borrows from Hollywood suspense classics, particularly "Rebecca," Hitchcock's Academy Award-winning thriller starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson. Ludlam's shameless plot - if you dare call it one - also raids those wonderful Universal horror flicks of the 1930s and boasts campy line readings from Poe, Ibsen, Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters.
As directed by Jonathan Moscone, this production blends Ludlam's intellectual genius, Mel Brooks' goofiness and elements of "Saturday Night Live" when it was actually funny.
Ludlam's maudlin melodrama unfolds at Mandercrest, in the fictional vicinity of Daphne Du Maurier's Manderley and Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." Lord Edgar Hillcrest, a tweedy and ever-so-effeminate English aristocrat who fancies himself an Egyptologist, brings home his new bride to his gloomy and garish mansion perched on the precipice of a murky English moor.
Lord Edgar obviously likes his women full-figured - can you say "mommy?" - for Lady Enid, a retired actress, is built like a linebacker with a voice and hair to match. Her pouffy pompadour rivals those Texas society matrons of the 1970s. But now Lady E must deal with a disgruntled housekeeper with a bad Teutonic accent and sideburns, a depraved manservant with a bad leg and leering manner, plus an ominous painting of Lord Edgar's first wife Irma Vep (anagram for vampire), still lording it over the household from above the fireplace mantel.
Add dark stormy nights, ancient curses, vampires, walls that move, a portrait that does tricks, howling wolves, rolling fog and an Act Two mummy that turns into the seductive princess Pev Amri (another anagram for vampire).
If you think Lady Enid looks remarkably like Lord Edgar's dead wife, you've discovered the play's big joke. Two actors, the wonderfully talented Mark Anders and Richard Ruiz, play all eight roles in a tour-de-force stampede of cross-dressing quick-changes - 44 total. So everybody looks like everybody else in Ludlam's satirical spoof. The groundskeeper Nicodemus Underwood looks like Alcazar the Egyptian guide who looks like Lady Enid who looks like Princess Pev Amri who looks like the dead wife Irma Vep. And yes, Jane Twisden the housekeeper looks like Sir Edgar, who probably looks like the intruder - if only you could see his face.
Meanwhile, Ludlam moves the action to Egypt. Long before Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, Sir Edgar sets off to raid the tombs of the ancients. His guide, the shifty and greedy Alcazar, soon leads him to the temple of a forgotten mummy, encased in a gold sarco-FAG-us - as they are supposed to say in the play - and surrounded by jackal-headed Pharaohs on rollers. Even the bearskin rug gets an Egyptian headdress.
Director Moscone has made Ludlam's original fodder even more ridiculous. Purists may object, but the results provide some of the funniest moments of the production. Suddenly the Egyptian tomb becomes a gay disco with streamers and a mirrored ball, while the Weather Girls hit "It's Raining Men" pounds out the beat. At one point when Anders transforms from Lord Edgar into Jane onstage, he absurdly croons Cole Porter's "Night and Day." And back at Mandercrest, our personal favorite: a feuding Jane and Lady Enid play the theme from "Deliverance" on dueling dulcimers.
Whether they're running at each other like hogs in heat or gasping in terror, Anders and Ruiz keep us laughing for two hours, changing characters and costumes with split-second timing. As the scary, spiteful Jane, Anders exudes campy Viking demeanor. Instead of horns, his frivolous-looking maid's cap sprouts earflaps. When he switches into the grieving Sir Edgar, Anders' repressed aristocratic manner brings to mind the mockumentary maven Christopher Guest. Still, Lord E shows his caveman mettle when he trounces out to shoot a howling wolf, then lugs the carcass into the drawing room. And Anders throws a perfectly marvelous fit when he's possessed by the demonic specters of his haunted mansion.
Ruiz evokes a showy Shakespearean bravado reminiscent of "SNL"'s portly residents - think John Belushi and Horatio Sanz. What creepy Nicodemus lacks in limbs, he makes up for with a loose tongue that hangs out like a dog looking for something to lick. And that would be Jane. But she wants none of the deformed "sissy" from the stable. As Nicodemus, Ruiz frequently lapses into Bard-like rants - Othello and Lady Macbeth, for two. In one bravura quick-change tussle between two characters - both played by Ruiz - Nicodemus battles himself as he transforms into a hairy-clawed werewolf. But as the new Lady Hillcrest, Ruiz oozes plus-size couture, especially during her trademark theatrical entrances. Swirling like Loretta Young, the hefty, satin-clad Ruiz flings himself onto the chaise or floor - whatever is handy - always landing with a vapid, high-pitched sigh.
Neil Patel's set would have Architectural Digest cringing in revulsion. Blood-red plaid wallpaper covers the walls, a perfect match for the fireplace and woodwork. The stage is framed in faux leopard and the stage lights covered with faux tiger, while a huge, vicious-looking bearskin rug sprawls across the drawing-room floor. Obviously this chunky mammal was gunned down just before hibernation. Above the drawing room fireplace you spot the coup de grace, a menacing portrait of Irma Vep cradling a fangish wolf in her arms like a baby.
Katherine Roth's costumes and Geoff Korf's lighting bolster the hilarity. So does Stephen LeGrand's sound design, which runs the gamut between howling wolves and ominous thunder and lightning to sappy film-score crescendos and the theme from "Psycho."
Along with his literary and cinematic salutes, Ludlam penned wicked double-entendres, puns and one-liners. In a moment of melancholia, Lady Enid laments, "It's a terrible thing to marry an Egyptologist and find out he's hung up on his mummy."
It may be a terrible thing for her, but for the audience, it's priceless. We go home laughing.
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