Nine people arrive on a tiny island retreat, the guests of an eccentric millionaire named Mr. Rancour. And rancorous he is (or was)--the guests and the servants start dropping like flies. Once we learn the old man is dead himself, why should we care whodunit? Because the characters are so flamboyant and the murder weapons so colorful--characters are blown up, shot, poisoned, gassed, strangled, garbage-disposaled, bludgeoned and electrocuted. Oddly enough, no one is stabbed. Ah, well, you can't have everything.
Before the guests start making their early exits, college boy Geoffrey arrives uninvited, just in time for he and ingenue Hope Langdon to fall instantly in love. They are the only true innocents in the bunch, and through them romantic comedy gains a foothold amid the mayhem. Rachel deBenedet and Keith Rice sing "I Don't Know Why I Trust You (But I Do)" with tremendous comic fervor. We come to count on their cute excesses for laughs.
In this kind of theater, the heroes and villains are always stereotypical and the comedy is very broadly drawn. Lettie, the sexy maid (Cydney Rosenbaum sparkles in the role), is so greedy she dives headlong into her fate, thinking she will find a pot of cash at the end of her jump. Caretaker Flint (played with satyr-ic glee by Paul Dwyer) is too lustful for his own good. Clive (William Starn) isn't alive long enough to establish anything except the bad habit of condescension. And the most villainous of all the characters, old Mr. Rancour's nephew Nigel (played with urbane rascality by Randy St. Pierre), has the most to gain by his uncle's death--he is the legal heir, after all.
Mr. Rancour's old friend Dr. Grayburn (an appropriately stiff J.B. Trost) knows too much. In fact, that's a fault shared by all the guests--especially the inquisitive Miss Tweed, whose roguish snooping style allows Anne Oberbroeckling to parody Christie detectives like Miss Marple with terrific gusto. Guilty ex-lovers Colonel Gillweather and Lady Grace meet after years apart and sing the delectable duet "The Man With the Ginger Moustache." Dena Olstad-Rice has the best voice and the most dynamic comic presence of the cast, while Eugene Texas as the aging military man gives the most delightfully natural performance. And these two make a little magic together, too, as romantic seniors.
The music of Something's Afoot isn't too memorable, but the voices and the choreography are. And it all works in the end because the cast has so much fun. When this kind of comedy is done this well, it makes its own impossible world--a cartoon escape meant to tickle rather than challenge. There's something to be said for mindless entertainment--a few cheap laughs along with the falling bodies.--Mason
Something's Afoot, through April 21 at the Country Dinner Playhouse, 6875 South Clinton Street, Englewood, 799-1410.
