Review: Laughs Abound in THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP: A PENNY DREADFUL

Fans of comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, The Smothers Brothers, Cheech & Chong, and Key & Peele should keep their eye on Gabriel Graetz and Paul Melendy, whose latest comedy pairing in “The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful” – at Central Square Theater through June 28 – is a laugh riot.

Graetz and Melendy were seen last season in Greater Boston Stage Company’s “Featherbaby,” which featured two-time Elliot Norton Award winner Melendy as a potty-mouthed parrot often at odds with his temporary guardian, a professional jigsaw puzzler played by Graetz.

This time around, the actors are sharing the CST stage in Charles Ludlam’s satirical pastiche that pokes fun at a multitude of theatrical, literary, and film genres – running the gamut from melodramas and penny dreadfuls to classic films like “Wuthering Heights,” “Rebecca,” “Wolfman,” “The Mummy,” and “Psycho.” The play, written at the onset of the AIDS pandemic and originally starring Ludlam (who died of the disease in 1987) as Lady Enid and his partner Everett Quinton as Lord Edgar Hillcrest, opened off-Broadway in 1984 before going on to be produced internationally. In 1991, it was the most produced play in the United States.

Under David R. Gammons’ quick fire direction, CST’s production is astonishingly well executed and the perfect Pride month tribute to Ludlam’s specific genius. While AIDS had already begun to take hold among gay men and others, Ludlam refused to let it subsume his creative side. As Gammons points out in his program notes:

“At the center of Ludlam’s life and work is a fundamental Queerness. Not simply a queerness that manifests in sexual orientation or gender identity, but a queerness that represents an outlook on the world and an essential response to it. This queerness is defiant and proud. It stakes its claim by insisting that our difference is our superpower. Queerness that says ‘We don’t want to be normal. We won’t follow your rules. We will make our own world for ourselves: uninhibited and free, joyous and strange, original and full of potential.’”

With “Irma Vep” – the title both inspired by a character in the 1915 French silent movie serial “Les Vampires” and an anagram of the word “vampire” – the framing will remind some of “Rebecca,” the Daphne Du Maurier novel and the Alfred Hitchcock movie it inspired, with its tale of a young woman (Melendy) who becomes the second wife of a widowed lord (Graetz), whose first wife haunts the manor.

Throughout, Graetz and Melendy make no missteps as they walk, run, and jump through each crazy predicament. Neither actor loses focus, carrying out the mayhem without going up on a single line. The long-legged Melendy lounges in a satin robe and sounds menacing as a rabid werewolf, while Graetz is terrific as a safari-jacket-wearing explorer on a visit to the tombs of Egypt. That both men are hirsute just amps up the camp which is so vital to the show.

And there is no shortage of camp at CST, where Graetz and Melendy handle the ribald and double-entendre dialogue, not to mention multitudinous character and costume changes, with remarkable aplomb and even ease. The actors make their innumerable French-farce style entrances, after quick costume changes, without missing a beat or seeming winded – remarkable given Ludlam’s whirlwind script.

Costume Designer Seth Bodie does wonders with a wide array of fabrics, from burlap, felt, and fake fur to silk brocade and satin, all shown off to full effect by Graetz and Melendy and against the all-white drawing-room set by Gammons. Assistant stage manager, wardrobe supervisor, and backstage wardrobe runner Rebecca Straniere, and production assistant and wardrobe runner Emma J. Hunt, deserve special mention for their Herculean offstage efforts.

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