CST’s ‘Irma Vep’ lovingly recreates Ludlam’s world

By Rich Fahey

CAMBRIDGE – Once again, birds of a feather are getting together. And the result is just as hilarious.

Paul Melendy and Gabriel Graetz, who teamed up in Greater Boston Stage’s production of “Featherbaby,” have, at the Central Square Theater, taken on another work that is severely testing their talents.

In Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” the duo are teaming up to play eight very different roles in the comic mystery/thriller.

The two-hander requires precise comic timing, and a number of cross-dressing and cross-gender characters are baked into the production.  Melendy and Graetz have the talent and are all in, and then some. Cue a series of wigs and lightning-quick costume and character changes just seconds apart.

On Monday night, June 1, at The Huntington Theatre, Melendy, who has authored a seemingly endless string of nonpareil comic roles, won his second Elliot Norton Award for his portrayal of “Featherbaby.”

Now he and Graetz are teaming up to play eight different – make that very different – roles.

Multiple Norton Award-winning Director David R. Gammons (“Vanity Fair,” “Frankenstein”) is also doubling as scenic designer for this show, and has produced an extremely clever, intricate and versatile set that makes it possible to move between, for example, an English estate and an Egyptian tomb in an instant.  

There’s some dazzling work by other members of the design team, two members of the backstage team and, of course, Graetz and Melendy. They all combine to make this spoof of Gothic melodramas a joyous two hours of theatrical magic.

The story unfolds at the eerie Mandacrest Estate, the home of Egyptologist Lord Edgar Hillcrest (Graetz) and his new wife, Lady Enid (Melendy).

Once, Edgar and his late wife Irma Vep lived happily there with their young son Victor and Irma’s beloved pet wolf, also named Victor. Then came the day the two Victors went out for a walk – and just the wolf returned.

The boy was found in the mill run, his throat ripped apart by a wild animal. Irma defended the wolf, but Edgar blamed the animal, which Irma set free before Edgar could kill it. Irma died from mysterious causes soon afterward, and a grieving Edgar continued to hunt the wolf.

Lady Enid, meanwhile, finds it hard to warm up to her new digs. For three years after her death, Irma’s portrait hangs over the mantel in the main room.

Mandacrest’s maid,  Jane Twisden (also Graetz), is finding it hard to warm up to Lady Enid, and is also finding it hard to fend off the unwanted advances of mangy swineherd Nicodemus Underwood (also Melendy, at his comedic best). “You are beneath me and beneath me you are going to stay,” she says to him. “Someday you might want to get beneath me,” he leers menacingly.

Without giving too much away, the fantastical cast of characters will include a sympathetic werewolf, a vampire, and a mummy, resurrected after a 3000-year-old nap.  Everything you think you know will be turned on its head before the fateful climax.

Along the way, enjoy an endless amount of risqué and bawdy humor that is perfectly in keeping with the vibe of the piece.

The production values are simply sublime. Start with Gammons’ set, Jeff Adelberg’s lighting and Nate Tucker’s sound design and music that set the stage for the spooky goings-on. Tucker also uses pre-recorded voices that allow the actors to be in two places at once.

Seth Bodie’s costumes are spot-on, and Lauren Corcuera expertly designed the  properties.

Two other vital cogs in “Irma Vep”: Assistant Stage Manager, Wardrobe Supervisor and Backstage Wardrobe Runner  Rebecca Straniere and Production Assistant and  Backstage Wardrobe Runner Emma J. Hunt, who facilitated the many quick changes and also took a bow at the conclusion with the cast.

The late playwright and actor Ludlam, the founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company who passed away in 1987 from complications from AIDS, peppered “Irma Vep” with not only passages from Shakespeare and Joyce’s “Ulysses” but nods to popular Gothic film noirs such as “Rebecca” and “Gaslight.”

Gammons authored an extensive essay in the on-line program about Ludlam and his work. “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.”

Gammons also said that when Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS, he did not write a somber or maudlin death play, or an outraged and angry polemical screed, instead responding to the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic with his trademark sense of outrageous humor. “He wrote a play that fought horror with laughter and faced the unknowable with the absurd.”

A nod to Central Square’s dramaturgy with a display on the life and times of Ludlam and his legacy in the lobby.

Gammons, his cast, crew and designers have lovingly and skillfully re-created Ludlam’s hilarious world in “The Mystery of Irma Vep.”

The Central Square Theater production of “The Mystery of Irma Vep.” Directed by David R. Gammons. At the Central Square Theater through June 21. Centralsquaretheater.org