WELL-DIRECTED AND SMARTLY CAST ‘LUCKY STIFF’ IS AMUSING MAYHEM AT SCRIPPS RANCH THEATRE
If there was an award for best performance as a dead man in a stage musical, Ralph Johnson of Scripps Ranch Theatre’s “Lucky Stiff ” would be a shoo-in. The veteran San Diego actor spends the whole show playing a corpse, most of the time in a wheelchair with hat, sunglasses and stone face.
Johnson’s feat is all the more impressive given everything that happens around him.
This amusing musical farce that opened Saturday features a cast of 11 at times going at Keystone Cops speed — except for Johnson, of course.
However, under the direction of Kathy Brombacher with choreography by Valerie Clark, the antics on the Legler-Benbough Theatre stage rise well above controlled chaos.
“Lucky Stiff ” is based on the 1983 novel by Michael Butterworth titled “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” Frequent collaborators Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime,” “Anastasia”) turned that book into a musical five years later.
Scripps Ranch Theatre’s “Lucky Stiff ” is a co-production with Oceanside Theatre Company and will move to OTC’s Brooks Theatre next month (March 3 through 19) after this current engagement ends. It’s a show with a game cast, likable tunes and broad comedy that relies on physicality and artful characterization over double-takes.
It helps to buy into the wild premise: Unhappy British shoe salesman Harry Witherspoon (Cody Ingram) gets a telegram from an attorney who later informs him that an Uncle Anthony that he’d never heard of has died and left him $6 million. Naturally, there’s a catch and it’s a whopper: The terms of the will specify that Harry escort his American uncle’s embalmed body to Monte Carlo for a week of luxury and self-indulgence, everything from casino gambling to scuba diving.
That’s not all. If Harry doesn’t follow the specifications to a tee, the six mil will go to a charity — the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn. Deciding that anything’s better than a life selling shoes, Harry heads for Monte Carlo, pushing his deceased uncle around in a wheelchair all the way.
Complications ensue, as if pushing a corpse around Monte Carlo isn’t complicated enough. Uncle Anthony’s gun-toting (and hard of seeing) ex-lover Rita (Erica Marie Weisz) and her squeamish brother Vinnie (Kenny Bordieri) think Harry’s got the $6 million with him. Meanwhile, looking for Harry to slip up so that the dogs of Brooklyn can collect, determined Annabel Glick (Kelly Derouin) is on the scene too.
Where all this heads is predictable, though there are a couple of surprises.
Along the way some of “Lucky Stiff ’s” musical numbers, sung to piano accompaniment, shine.
The funniest come from Weisz (“Rita’s Confession,” “Fancy Meeting You Here”) and Bordieri with his “Phone Call” to his annoyed wife back in America. As the crooning emcee of a casino cabaret, Bob Himlin could be a French-speaking cousin of Bill Murray’s lounge lizard character (“Monte Carlo!”). Olivia Pence goes all out as temptress Dominique du Monaco (“Speaking French”).
Ingram and Derouin, who possesses a silken voice, make a nice “lovehate” couple. Their big ballad together is fittingly titled “Nice.”
Everyone’s colorfully costumed by Marcene Drysdale, the designer last fall for Bodhi Tree Concerts’ “Dido and Aeneas.”
With all its moving parts, more than 15 musical numbers and a zany plot, “Lucky Stiff ” is not a simple show to pull off. Luckily for the collaborating theaters, their team is up to the task.