Theater Review: The Savoyard Murders

                    Taylor Henderson, Phil Johnson, Elliott Goretsky, David McBean

What’s to be said about this crazy, mixed-up piece of lunacy that skewers everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to policemen to clarinetists?

Don’t do what I did, sit and take copious notes, trying to make sense of it all. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. What it does do is inspire is a lot of laughs.

The author is local theater artist/actor Omri Schein, who got the idea while watching the Vincent Price movie “Theatre of Blood,” in which several theater critics get killed. Schein decided to take Gilbert & Sullivan operettas as his source, and place it in the semi-spiffy flat of theater critic Tiberius Spriggs, played to the hilt by Phil Johnson. There are posters of several G&S operettas on the walls.

Spriggs has invited four other people, including actor Cyrus Schock (Durwood Murray), about whom Spriggs had written a bad review.

Rowena Rawlings (Taylor Henderson), the lady in red, calls herself an “artiste” and gets insulted by Cyrus Schock, who still wants to sleep with her (will she?).

Director Balthazar Bellwood (Daren Scott) also shows up, claiming to have found a “lost” G&S operetta. 

Ezra Dibble (Eliott Goretsky), a G&S fan, also shows up, as does the uninvited but furious (and hilarious) Desdemona Chatfield Snarr (Wendy Waddell), who lost her actor husband to a theater accident and wants to know why.

David McBean plays seven characters (who else could do that?) with great panache. 

If you’re lost already, fear not. Craziness ensues, of the sort that description wouldn’t elucidate. You gotta be there to see it. 

The set (by Yi-Chien Lee) is terrific, with a big couch in the center and doors in the right places. Costumes are a wow, thanks to Jennifer Brawn Gittings, and aided by Peter Herman’s wondrous and often funny hair and wigs designs.

Leave it to Roustabouts to come up with something weird. A good time was had by all. And that’s what matters.