The title character in Pocket Sandwich Theatre's Curse of the Mummy is more agile and a lot funnier than Karloff's cinematic take. As portrayed by Jeffrey Mena, this ancient corpse doesn't always strangle his victims; he sometimes boogies with them to Steve Martin's "King Tut" tune and the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian." He's a mummy with moves.
Playwright Rodney Dobbs specializes in goofy, over-the-top melodramatic retellings of well-known legends, so no wonder this mummy isn't too tightly wrapped. Good thing, too, because he's surrounded by other characters who have only loose connections to their historic counterparts.
Through three acts, the 10 actors in Curse of the Mummy do their damnedest to stick to Dobbs' lines and somehow get the audience to follow a plot that only slightly parallels the story of real-life Egyptologists Lord Carnarvon and Sir Howard Carter and their famed unearthing of the tomb of King Tut. But this being the Pocket Sandwich Theatre, where the crowd is encouraged to toss popcorn at the villains and ooooh and awwww at the heroes, deviations from historical fact and the script itself are frequent, and, most of the time, the improvised dialogue provides the biggest laughs.
"Help! You must help me! Help me get out of this scene!" begs the Carnarvon character (played by Dan Dickerson).
Sometimes the "ad-libs" are written in.
"I'll just read this hieroglyphic out loud because I'm sure nothing bad can come of that," proclaims Carter (played drolly by R. Bradford Smith). And then, in an aside to the audience: "That's foreshadowing."
Indeed it is. Because by invoking the ancient curse from the tomb of dead pharaoh Abul Ra, Carter summons the mummified corpse back to life to search for his beloved, an Egyptian princess who bears a striking resemblance to the lovely Lady Evelyn Carter (Nancy Wood), Sir Howard's daughter.
Much raucous merriment ensues, of course, as all the characters try to stay out of the way of the wandering mummy. Among them: a mad nun named Mother McDougal (Shalitras Flowers), who runs an asylum in the British countryside; a greedy Egyptian something-or-other named Mohammed Ali Bey (Kenneth Sparks), who wears a fez and wants his mummy back; a pub wench named Bess Churchill (Rhonda Hutchison) and her ale-swilling boyfriend Bradley (Jon Paul Burkhart).
There's also a cowgirl named Rosalind (Kirsten Stiff-Busenhart), who's dressed in Wild West gear for no reason whatsoever. Besides giddily yapping about all the Egyptian stuff within the play, Rosalind serves as a kind of hostess beforehand, greeting the audience and leading them in singalongs to wish happy birthdays and anniversaries to various attendees. It's this component that gives Pocket Sandwich Theatre its neighborhood ambience as a kind of Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups. Instead of a big talking mouse, this place has a cowgirl with a grin as wide as the Panhandle.
Playwright Dobbs succeeds at making his Curse of the Mummy script play on several levels--the obvious sight gags and awful puns are for the kids, and some clever movie references pop up for the elders. "Damn you, mummy, I'm not one of your fans!" shrieks Sir Howard in an homage to another of Hollywood's scariest monsters, Joan "Mommy Dearest" Crawford. Another character dies at the mummy's hands uttering one word: "Rosebud."
The play also attempts some not-always-successful topical material about airport security, the scandals in the Catholic church and the persistence of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Like the old movies, Curse of the Mummy includes a flashback sequence to explain why the unearthed mummy's so upset. This scene takes place upstage behind a scrim, where a balky smoke machine coughs out anemic puffs of "fog." The flimsiness of the tiny set only adds to the silly nature of the whole production. Dobbs also designed it, and a careful look at his painted-on glyphs yields some extra chuckles.
By the end, the audience and the cast are exhausted from their efforts, and the poor Pocket Sandwich waitstaff looks ready for entombment themselves. As in all melodramas, this one concludes with true love winning out over evil. The villain meets his violent end. And the mummy, poor fellow, returns to the afterlife as shredded as a box of Enron files. It's all good fun, this rags-to-wretches undertaking.
Kitchen Dog Theater, the scrappy little company based at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, has lined up an eclectic new season of old and new plays. Here's what's coming up for the 2002-'03 production year: Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, September 14-October 15; Shakespeare's King Lear, November 2-24; the Southwest premiere of George F. Walker's new comedy Heaven, February 22-March 23, 2003; In the Belly of the Beast, April 19-May 28, 2003, from the controversial prison writings of the late Jack Henry Abbott (edited and directed by Adrian Hall); and Elaine Romero's Curanderas! Serpents of the Clouds, June 7-29, 2003.
Kitchen Dog's ongoing Cabaret Series will feature Irish playwright Conor McPherson's one-man drama The Good Thief, Wendy Kesselman's The Juniper Tree (based on the Grimms' fairy tale) and Neil Labute's riveting trilogy of monologues, Bash.
For subscription or ticket information, call the Kitchen Dog Theater box office at 214-953-1055 or check its Web site: www.kitchendogtheater.org.
Ground Zero Theater Company, which performs at the Bath House Cultural Center, is seeking new 10-minute plays for its annual Christmas at Ground Zero festival. Deadline is September 9 for scripts written for two to six characters, with content relevant to the holiday season (although not necessarily about Christmas). Dark humor and satire are encouraged. Adult language is acceptable.
Scripts must be original, previously unproduced and require minimal sets. All submissions (only three per writer) must include a title page and the writer's contact information. Writers must live in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas or New Mexico. Writers of chosen scripts will be paid for production rights. Production dates are December 5-21.
Send scripts to Ground Zero Theater Company, 302 W. Neely St., Dallas, TX 75208. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope.
For additional information, contact Ground Zero artistic director Kimberlyn Crowe at 214-948-3675, e-mail GZTC@[email protected] or visit www.groundzerotheater.org.
