STAGE REVIEW : Too Many Chefs Cook Up ‘Word’

There are so many people behind the musical farce “Mum’s the Word!” at Group Repertory Theatre, that you’d think that one of them would have detected that the show was running off the rails.

Then again, one of the problems may be that there are so many people: Neal Sullivan and Tim Halphide (book and lyrics); Stan Mazin (direction and choreography); John Granet (music) and Lee Hale (additional music and musical direction). And that’s not including the design team: Maurine Sullivan (a nifty set with lots of doors for farce); Dean Harris (chintzy, unraveling costumes); M. J. Mitchel (some flashy lights) and William A. McCoy (budget-scale sound).

A lot of cooks, a lot of assistants, and a very flat souffle. Taking off from ‘30s mummy horror movies, the Sullivan-Halphide book has archeologist Forbes Whitney-Pitt (a hapless Bert Kramer) carting a valuable Egyptian mummy find into his living room (!) and trailed by the evil Snefru Gizah (a stiff Joe Barnaba), who will kill anyone who stands between him and his precious mummy.

Well, by the end of this laborious tale, weighted down with 18 unmemorable songs, there are no less than three mummies--dancing a chorus line, spinning through doors, and creating a bigger traffic jam than on the 405’s South Bay Curve. Given the show’s ultra-dumb ethic, a bubbly zip needs to be injected into the farce action. But like Group Repertory’s recent stab at farce, “Neighborhood Crime Watch,” the actors aren’t up to the challenge, and only Nicole Mestres’ charming daughter has a voice to hide the songs’ shortcomings.