AISLE SAY Toronto
THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP:
A Penny Dreadful
by Charles Ludlam
Directed by Aaron Mark
Starring Bill Bowers and Tom Hewitt
Berkshire Theatre Festival
Fitzpatrick Main Stage, June
28-July 19
Thank you, BTG, for enlivening the season by producing
The Mystery of
Irma Vep: a Penny Dreadful, the campy
pseudo-Gothic-cum-everything-else theatrical romp written in the mid-1980’s by
the late Charles
Ludlam. Created for both himself and his partner, Everett Quinton, Irma Vep references Victorian
melodrama, Gothic thrillers, vampires, Shakespeare, Hitchcock and a battery of
shamefully unapologetic one-liners, both crude and less crude. If it’s
consistency of style or tone that you favour, well, forget it and go to see for
yourself what unadorned showmanship is all about.
In the course of two hours, the two actors –
in this production we are blessed by having Bill Bowers and Tom Hewitt – play a variety of characters and don full costume for each. And
the costumes, designed by Wade
Laboissonniere, are dead-on in their imitation
of what the originals might have been, plus enough tongue-in-cheek to
complement Ludlam’s fondness for the way-too-much.
Bowers and Hewitt are remarkably agile in voice,
body and spirit. Their chemistry warms the audience early on and draws laughter
that builds from moment to moment. And though it’s Ludlam who provides the
platform, it is the actors who use the script as a launching pad for their own
inexhaustible store of tricks – and tricks in the very best sense of the
word. In fact, the script promises more than it delivers and takes longer than
it should to dive into the insanity and inanity that makes for such an
enjoyable evening. But then, the script was written thirty years ago and at a
time when this off-off Broadway enterprise was something of a rarity that has,
over time, become a cult classic. I’m guessing that what was audacious and
tacky in its original format and setting, has become cleaned up for a wider
public. That’s not a criticism – but it helps to know the play’s origins
when watching it today.
BTG has stepped outside its more typical
programming, and that’s all to the better. And hearing this audience laugh at
most of the references and all of the asides was further encouragement that
productions needn’t be entirely familiar beforehand – people are willing
to buy tickets to what they couldn’t have known and leave delighted to have
made a new discovery. Irma Vep, with
its inside theatre and film jokes, could easily lapse into an us-them
experience. Happily, that is not the case here and for that we applaud.
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