It’s the last dress rehearsal before the opening of Drop Dead. Chaz is not doing well, in his role as the longtime Barrington butler. Another keeps stumbling over the name, “Penelope”. The wealthy producer keeps pressuring the director, and deferring to his daughter (Candy) the “ingenue”. The set leaves much to be desired, the guy playing the detective feels uninspired, and Candy has the range of a popgun. Mona, the former star, is temperamental and contentious, and the grand lady of the stage is all but stone deaf. The lofty, eccentric playwright, Alabama Miller, keeps showing up on set, blasted and out of control. The show is imploding, and solutions seem elusive and unreliable.
Sometimes the names of characters can tell a lot. Chaz Looney: the loopy rookie actor. Candy Apples: the insipid, erstwhile porn actress. The vain, pompous director: Victor Le Pew. P.G. “Piggy Banks”: (tehe) the wealthy, bossy producer. Drop Dead is a kind of play within a play. A woebegone production, cursed by mishaps, incompetence, a shoestring budget (for starters) finds itself under attack by an actual murderer. It’s the kind of comedy that makes death the punchline. Playwrights Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore exploit the often overlooked absurdity of bodies piling up. A fact often ignored in say, Hamlet and The Lieutenant at Inishmore.
Drop Dead, a spoof of familiar “whodunits”, takes the story of a sinking production, and stitches it to murder mystery, blurring the lines between the fanciful onstage, and grisly backstage events. Director Leigh Wyatt Moore has risen to the occasion, with confidence and aplomb. The gags: physical, verbal, practical and ridiculous comes thick and fast. A corpse under a sheet might be subject to rigor mortis. A “dying” actress can’t keep her knees together. Chaz and Candy are a snogging machine. And Mona is busy preserving her precious ego. Moore keeps the blocking tight, the pace moving and the timing impeccable. She manages this spirited, versatile, adroit cast with the precision of an orchestra conductor.
If ubiquitous chaos and calamity have been kicking your tuchas, why not pay a visit to Richardson Theatre Centre, where punchy, preposterous shenanigans are on the loose? You know you want to.
Richardson Theatre Centre presents Drop Dead, playing February 4th-20th, 2022. 518 West Arapaho Road, Suite 113, Richardson, Texas 75080. 972-699-1130. richardsontheatrecentre.net