‘Geraldine’ Caught in the Dark Side

In his dark comedy “Goodbye, Geraldine,” Michael Ryan has mixed “Crime and Punishment” with “The Odd Couple.” Imagine Raskolnikov starring in an American sitcom, and you get the idea.

We never meet the title character, a fat, filthy landlady who presides over a run-down apartment building on Chicago’s North Side. But she has just about ruined the lives of tenant Jeffrey (Tim Gardner), a struggling actor, and his gay roommate Alex (Brian Morri). Geraldine’s sins include refusing to turn on the heat in their igloo of an apartment and interfering with Jeffrey’s acting career.

So Jeffrey kills her. The rest of the play is spent persuading Alex to help dispose of her sizable remains one piece at a time.

Directed by Jeffrey Wylie, “Goodbye, Geraldine” at Coast Playhouse is plenty dark, but the comedy gets lost somewhere. Given the setup, viewers might expect an Orton-esque farce, with a straight-arrow killer and his accomplice rushing to hide a body that cannot be hidden. Yet the humor is too flat-footed and conventional to ballast such a wicked premise. Murder should prompt characters to do more than hurl one-liners at one another.

Gardner and Morri have aced the mismatched-roommates shtick beloved by prime-time TV viewers everywhere. Bill Feeney has a few nice moments as a blowhard Chicago cop, and Stephanie Ittleson earns big laughs as a gum-smacking fingernail technician who has a crush on Jeffrey. Sticking a manicurist with a Brooklyn accent in a play set in Chicago may be this production’s most imaginative stroke.

* “Goodbye, Geraldine,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends July 9. $18. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.