Players' production of 'Murder' brings laughs

When love turns to murder, the results can be gruesome.

But sometimes, those love-gone-wrong murder stories can be the source of some hearty belly laughs, especially when the would-be murderers are incompetent buffoons.

In the River City Players' newest production, "Murder at the Howard Johnson's," three rooms in a Howard Johnson's hotel turn into havens for misguided existentialism, love gone bad and, most of all, murder.

It's the story of a woman whose selfishness ignites an inferno of jealousy from her bland used car salesman husband and her weasely dentist of a lover.

The 90-minute production relies on only three cast members: Bart Elfrink, who also serves as the director and plays the husband, Paul; Meredith Elfrink, Bart's wife in real life and in the play, named Arlene; and Kyle Van Pool, who plays the sleazy dentist, Mitchell, that steals Arlene from Paul.

The play starts in a Howard Johnson hotel room sometime in December, as lovers Mitchell and Arlene are planning to kill Paul. They've arranged for him to visit the room under false pretense, and their murderous glee grows as they imagine hitting him with a variety of blunt objects.

Pool does a near-perfect job of playing the sniveling rat of a dentist, with a tacky seafoam green jacket and his lust over the thought of murdering his lover's husband.

Paul is a doltish, shallow man who has never taken time to think about the needs of his wife. The rage and bewilderment Bart puts into the character when he discovers the lovers' plot is quite convincing.

The humor begins when Mitchell and Arlene get down to the business of killing Paul, as the car dealer challenges them to do it, mocking Mitchell as a little baby while he calmly allows the dentist to tie him up. The attempt fails, and by the end of the play, two more unsuccessful plots have been hatched.

Bart's portrayal of the unobservant Paul is the gold ring around the production, especially when he goes to self-realization classes in a last-ditch effort to save his marriage and starts talking to his body parts (later Arlene attends the same classes, falls in love with the instructor and becomes an existentialist).

One-liners abound throughout the play, poking fun at marriage, sex and the injustices of life, and some slapstick is thrown in for good measure.

The assistant director is Regina Hagen and the set was designed by Tim Roth.

msanders@semissourian.com

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