STAGE REVIEWS : ‘MURDER AT THE HOWARD JOHNSON’S’

“Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” dies an early death at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, a victim of built-in banality and a production that takes a light approach to a dark send-up of contemporary love.

Love and marriage get a black eye from playwrights Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick in their story of a consciousness-raised, liberated woman and her dentist lover and their plot to murder her husband if he refuses to give her a divorce. He does; they do; he survives the attempt.

The next act has the wife plotting to murder her lover after she discovers him performing something more intimate than a root canal on his dental hygienist. She has the gall to ask her husband to do the dirty deed for her. He agrees; the two men scuffle; she splits. Predictably, the third act has the husband and the lover plotting to murder the wife. As another playwright observed, the course of true love never did run smooth.

Director Pati Tambellini and her cast have taken a straightforward approach to material that is blackly absurdist, cheerfully blunting any satiric edges in the script. These characters--as played by Diana Taylor, Matthew LaVigne and Neil Prussel--simply don’t come across as larger-than-life, aggressively amoral urban neurotics. If the playwrights intended any commentary on contemporary middle-class morality, it is lost here.

The set, designed by Lonnie Alcaraz, has an unarguable authenticity, however. All the furnishings, right down to the carpeting, came from the Howard Johnson’s hotel in Monrovia.

“Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” will play through Saturday at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 661 Hamilton St. Information: (714) 650-5269.