Panache Productions, Springfield, MA
By K. J. Rogowski
To truly enjoy the plot and purpose of Panche Productions’
current show, Charles Ludlams’
“The Mystery of Irma Vep,” the audience needs to make note of a key line
in the play’s title, in the small print, which reads “a penny dreadful."
Wikipedia defines the term as: “a variety of publications that featured cheap
sensational fiction…” With that firmly in mind, all of the silliness,
improbable plot twists and melodramatic carrying on makes nearly perfect sense,
which is as close as it has to come to make for an evening of fun and laughs.
The setting for the action is, of course, the
classic…"it was a dark and stormy night" at the old Hillcrest estate,
complete with abundant thunder and lightening. The cast of eight outrageous
characters is carried off by only two actors, Mark Ekenbarger and Robert
Laviolette, who are, at one moment, a maid named Jane and a groundskeeper named
Nicodemus. The actors then dash off stage and back on stage to become Lord and
Lady Edgar Hillcrest. More dashing takes place as they become… well, the
audience gets the idea.
These multiple changes are handled nicely, with the help of
a three person backstage dressers' crew, who transform their actors back on
stage in time to keep the action flowing. The set design by Robert Laviolette,
who also directs the show, carries the penny dreadful theme through the comedy
with portraits that come alive, secret panels, and an Egyptian tomb, complete
with a golden sarcophagus. This fast paced and comically convoluted plot takes
participants on a pulp fiction adventure from the moors at Hillcrest to the
deserts of Egypt, in an effort to discover just what “The Mystery of Irma Vep”
actually is.
