From: ReviewPlays.Com
“THE TANGLED SNARL” "MURDER ME ONCE”,
Fremont Centre Theatre
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“Who Done It’s” have been a staple in entertainment since
the first time the curtain rose back in the
ancient days of the cave people. And in most cases, the plot keeps you guessing
until the very end,
when you discover the butler did it.
There’s always been a master detective or a super sharp cop, a sexy
dame who keeps the sleuth
distracted from the real work, a sleazy hanger on who is a stooge for the
real bad guy, and of
course, the unexpected villain or villainess – however the author chose
to write it.
Not be outdone, The Freemont Centre Theatre has mashed up a couple of yarns
featuring Spuds
Idaho, a master of detection that could rival the best Mickey Spillane private
eye or even National
Public Radio’s Guy Noir.
Spoofing the old genre, where the hero does a running commentary of the action,
Spuds runs into
nefarious characters and gorgeous women, making sure to come up with scandalous
similes and
murderous metaphors to describe his predicaments. When he first meets grieving
widow Leslie
Detweiler, he tells the audience she’s “a woman with a heavenly
body that made you want to get
an ‘A’ in astronomy”. When he meets Myra Fontaine, the widow
of Coins Fontaine he utters that
this is “a woman with the kind of shape that makes two great first
impressions.” They get worse,
(or better, depending on your state of mind at the time)
These widows, and the “colorless” characters around them serve
up a tasty course of detective
drama all in black and white – the sets are gray – black and white,
the actors wear gray – black and
white and the entire production has the look and feel of a black and white
B movie from the 1940’s,
complete with a suicide note from the victim who was shot, stabbed and poisoned.
The Tangled
Snarl and Murder Me Once are two one act plays, loosely linked together by
Spuds and populated
by the type of characters who might show up in a Damon Runyon story playing
the whole thing
strictly for laughs, as James Reynolds directs the story by Frank Semerano
and John Rustan.
In the first, a mysterious package holds a vital clue and the secret of why
the victim got killed. The
second story casts the murder blame on the widow, suspected of wanting the
inheritance, but with
two jealous daughters and a butler, the clues are up for grabs . Every
performance is so far over
the top that it’s too good to miss, with Todd Babcock doing a terrific
Spuds that’s a cross of Get
Smart, James Cagney and Mike Hammer, as Richard Voigts offers the perfect
characterization of
“the butler” complete with accent and stiff upper lip.
The women are great, brooding, mysterious and sexy, and even lovely goofy
Ginny, Spuds’ secretary,
a starry eyed ditz with a love-hate passion for Spuds, has a special charm.
Daphne Bloom plays the
kind of girl that would make a boss forget about using a Dictaphone, preferring
to explore her
shorthand skills.
There is so much sex appeal exploding from Mary Beth Evans as Leslie
Detweiler, it
would take two companies of firefighters to control the flames, while
Arianne Zuker is
so volcanic that seismographs go off the scale when she appears.
Catherine Munden as oldest daughter, Chantel Fontaine, is icy and cool, giving
new images to the
phrase “having it on the rocks”, while Alison McMillan as Saphron
Fontaine, youngest daughter,
has the childish innocence that makes you want to play house all day long!
Dan Payne is terrific as THE MAN, a two-bit hoodlum whose age is greater
than his I.Q. and Roger
Davis plays Lt. Angus Brogue, a city detective with an brogue that spans
continents, from wanna be
Irish to our present Governator’s accent, managing to milk every line
for a laugh. All detective stories
have a kid, who could be good, but borders on being bad, and Arman Manyan
is very good at being
a bad kid who sort of helps Spuds, but is more out to help himself. There
is a real cop at the end,
played by a Guest Appearance officer, who will be different at every performance.
With only one line,
the Guest got almost as big a hand as Spuds – go figure!
Never mind if the resolution of the plots isn’t as clean as a CSI episode.
Prepare for a night of fun and
nostalgia (depending on your age), as you go back to the good old days of
bad stories with bad actors
acting in bad movies – except that in this one, everything is good!
And if you want to know who did it
- - - you’ll have to come to see!
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