Word: slapstickers
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Maid for Murder brims over with Establishment accents, sex, slapstick, guitar music and Tom and Jerry homicide plans. Anna Karina is back, this time a Corsican in frequent deshabille, out to inherit Oberon Manor from a pair of bumbling bachelor brothers. A tubby reporter for True Women arrives: "She looks more like four women," observes little brother. It turns out that "Aunt fell down the well and kicked the bucket," among other calamities. One picturesque heroine and half-a-dozen giggles in Maid for Murder barely rescue British comedy from a stained reputation...
...jokes are funny as the plot is bitter. The humor is broad ("Vat 69--that's the Pope's phone number"), there are lots of loud, funny songs, and people fly on and off the stage in the best slapstick tradition. You can't help laughing...
Ships & Caesars. Manna is adept at verbal slapstick. He is the fellow who created in the night boites of Cocoa Beach the astronaut who refused to be blasted off until his missing crayons were found. In another routine, he lands the first men on the moon-with such a jolt that their trousers fall down. He has some good one-liners. "I don't talk about Liz Taylor because some day it will be my turn," he says. He also notes that he never talks about his wife because "what's done is done...
...theater-in-the round, and at first the technique is disquieting and the action disconnected. Soon one adjusts, though, and good lighting complements his generous employment of the entrances, especially for various characters who assume the temporary role of narrator. Mullin is particularly adept at staging the few slapstick scenes, and would probably do an excellent job on a play with more of them...
...addition to these obstacles the play has the further handicap of a very overworked, highly unbelievable first act which brings together both divorced couples with predictable, semi-slapstick entrances that would stand out as cliches in a TV family situation comedy. Not until the end of the act, when Cynthia Karslake (Joanne Hamlin) breaks down in hysterical tears after being forced to face her former husband, is any sense of reality injected, and this shot is so unexpected it is startling From there on, at least to the last scene, the show is reasonably good entertainment and often very funny...