Porn to Be Mild

The funniest third of the evening is Act 2, which finds us watching the backstage goings-on during a disastrous performance of the play-within-the-play. As the silly Nothing On plays out on the other side of the scenery, the feuding, exasperated actors behind the scenes madly juggle their props and costumes, plus a fire ax, a bottle of scotch and numerous bouquets of flowers, all without a word of dialogue. The circus of pantomime and slapstick depends on split-second timing, and the WaterTower cast doesn't miss a trick. Chamblee Ferguson as the accident-prone Freddie, Cyndee Mayfield as the sardine-tossing Dotty, J. Brent Alford as the frustrated director and David Stroh as the aging boy-ingenue Garry Lejeune give performances so good, they make comedy look easy. Even the curtain call is funny.

Just down the hall from Noises Off, in the Black Box Theatre, Rover Dramawerks revives Spider's Web, a rarely performed, early-'50s Agatha Christie mystery. Like the body that turns toes up in the drawing room of lead character Clarissa Hailsham-Brown (Jessica Wiggers), this production doesn't have a pulse.

Carrollton-based Rover Dramawerks concentrates on staging "lost or forgotten works of well-known authors.'' Nowhere in its mission statement, however, does it say it will do them well. Their attempt to spin new interest into Spider's Web ends up in a tangle of uninspired direction (by Misty Baptiste), inept acting (by nearly everyone in the cast), haphazard set and costume designs, missed cues and fumbled lines. The show never finds the crisp rhythms needed to sustain suspense or to keep the audience tuned in. Sometimes the pace drags so badly, it's possible to catch a few winks before the next character speaks.

There's not much point in reviving an old-timey whodunit if just sitting through it is murder.