 |
| Photo By Sandy Underwood |
|
Steven Hendrickson, Rita Gardner and Carolyn Swift star in
Murderers.
|
Some of the jokes in playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's
Murderers are amusing. Others are not. Ultimately they add up to a
concept for a comedy about wealthy senior citizens murdering each other and being murdered in a glitzy retirement community in Florida. But the
concept on view at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park through April 28 remains a
concept that's funny enough but never turns into an actual play with actual characters that are bedeviled by the actual anguish and indignities that can accompany aging. In the same way Hatcher's
A Picasso (at the Playhouse in 2004) remained a
concept, it never quite turned into a meaningful drama about arrogant Nazi attempts to dictate the shapes and colors of culture.
With Murderers Hatcher returns to a theatrical form he explored successfully in Three Viewings (at Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati several seasons back) -- dispensing with plot development, character interaction, even with character development, while seeking comedy in mordant subject matter. Three people appear separately and tell unrelated stories directly to the audience -- speaking as themselves and, in slightly altered voices and postures, as the friends, family members and victims who figure in their murderous tales.
But the three macabre monologues that make up Viewings, all set in a smarmy mortuary, reveal character and coalesce into playlets in ways that the three Murderers do not. Direction as well as scripting differentiates the two productions. At ETC, director D. Lynn Meyers built in urgency and kept tight focus. At the Playhouse, debuting director Sarah Gioia keeps her actors wandering and the tone hands-in-pockets casual and self-deprecating.
It didn't hurt, incidentally, that ETC's Viewings featured a made-in-heaven pairing of part and performer: Deb Girdler was unforgettable as Mac, a woman who attends the viewings of strangers for the purpose of stealing jewelry from the corpses.
The three Playhouse Murderers are:
1. Gerald (Steve Hendrickson). He's past middle years but not yet doddering. He marries his longtime girlfriend's dying mother so that he, and ultimately she, can inherit the mother's millions without suffering the pangs of inheritance and capital gains taxes. But Mama isn't dying after all. So Gerald decides to hurry her along, despite having developed a spot of affection for the old girl and a taste for retirement community living. Problem is that gigolo Jerry across the street has discovered Gerald's plotting. Blackmail is attempted. Murder ensues. Gerald is convicted. Nobody inherits. The millions turn into lawyers' fees. Hendrickson's offhand manner, played like a Jay Leno monologue, makes Steve likeable enough but unconvincing.
2. Lucy (Rita Gardner). Life's all restful rosy sunsets for the eightysomethings at -- note the joke -- Riddle Key until a slut from the past turns up and starts re-seducing all the men she'd seduced years earlier up north, including Lucy's husband. Obviously, the seductress has to die so Lucy makes certain successful arrangements. And she's so pissed off at the philanderer that she commits suicide as a form of everlasting punishment. Twice Gioia has her drink from what is plainly a glass of ice water while calling it a "brandy Alexander without the brandy." (When Gerald lifts a martini it at least looks like a martini.) And times without number Gioia has Lucy sit and tilt back in her puffy recliner only to flip the lever forward and pop up again rather like a self-actuating jack-in-the-box. Gardner plays Lucy on the dark side of wisecracking spry. Now why does Estelle Getty's acid caricature in Golden Girls come to mind?
3. Minka (Carolyn Swift). She's not a senior. She's an administrator working at Riddle Key and doing her serial damnedest to rid it of inconvenient people. Despite some exuberance in Swift's reading, Minka's murky motivation keeps the character from developing any real conviction.
Technical aspects show the sleek professionalism typical of the Playhouse.
Curiously, when Murderers was produced in Philadelphia last October it was 35 minutes longer. Maybe what Hatcher whacked was its heart. Grade: C
MURDERERS continues at Playhouse in the Park through April 28.
