Theater review part deux: The Murders in the Rue Morgue at Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Dallas

by Christopher Soden of Christopher Soden, Dallas GLBT Arts Examiner

An evening of relaxed, casual, amusing entertainment.

Pocket Sandwich Theatre

Matt Stepanek, Shannon Rasmussen, and Patrick Douglass from Pocket Sandwich Theatre's The Murders in the Rue Morgue

In their fine tradition of “Popcorn Tossing Comedy Thrillers” Pocket Sandwich Theatre is currently staging The Murders in the Rue Morgue (playing through February 18), loosely based on the narrative by Edgar Allan Poe. (The same way Hart to Hart was “loosely based” on The Thin Man). A mad doctor in Paris kidnaps hapless young ladies, then subsequently performs fiendish experiments on them. If the experiment fails, well, into the river she goes. With all the bodies turning up, will Professor Henri ever bring this miscreant to justice? Fear not, by the time the singalong is over, the cheesecake and brownie sundaes have been served, we’ve endured countless, shameless puns, and followed the antics of Bongo, the red-haired monkey with a Shriner’s cap, all will be resolved and balance restored to the universe.

As so many of you know, PST has a knack for regaling audiences with their strategy for successful comedy. Goofy dialogue + alcohol + food + popcorn ammo + audience participation = “The most fun you can have in a Dallas Theatre.” Every show usually contains two or three ingenious elements, in Murders, this would include the aforementioned Bongo, a fetching damsel in gendarme drag, and a Texas confederate (with lots of colorful expressions) named Willie Byrd. And mostly it holds up. Some scripts work better than others, sometimes the audience provides enough boisterous energy to keep the raft afloat through three acts and two intermissions. Audience involvement is often key, as the silliness (often inspired) of the text is a given.

I’m beginning to think there should a special genre dubbed Camp Transformation (i.e. so bad it’s good) for the kind of movie driven comedy being exploited so much in the DFW Metroplex lately. Schlock Cinema can often be wildly entertaining onstage when imbued with the right touch, hence PST’s series of send ups that have spoofed Slasher, Titanic Gods and James Bond films with loopy gusto. Murders in the Rue Morgue felt a bit languid the Friday night I was there and the crowd much rowdier than usual, filling the aisles with a blizzard of popcorn, and some joker who didn’t realize (repeatedly) “Mango” wasn’t a brilliant response to Bongo (despite our love for Chris Kattan’s perennial SNL dancer). Hilarity resulted most from actor response to hecklers and kiddies on the warpath. Check out Murders for an evening of relaxed, casual, amusing entertainment. And even though it’s okay to hurl popcorn, have mercy. I’m still picking it out of my beard.