It’s Death by Dullness at Cypress Civic Theatre

The Orange County community theater addiction to murder mysteries--especially comic murder mysteries--continues unabated.

The addiction is so complete, so controlling in local houses that Cypress Civic Theatre is not only doing Paul Freed’s unbelievably lame “Death by Chocolate,” it is doing it for the second time in the 1990s.

Now that’s called being hooked, and not just on “Chocolate.”

In 1991, Craig Harreld directed. Harreld directs again, but it is so slipshod that you might suspect Harreld had never directed before. The overwhelming feeling is of under-rehearsed actors allowed to do anything they want and mug up a storm, just as long as we’re all supposedly having fun.

Very little is fun, however, when the playwright thinks he is being clever and can’t hide the fact that he’s a poor writer.

Craig Jackman is allowed the most mugging in the lead role of health resort manager John Stone and is assigned most of the bad, would-be punning lines.

(His assistant, named Dyslexia--itself the source of the inevitable stream of malapropisms--mentions that a storm blew out the bridge last night, and Stone cracks that she should be sure to take them out at night.)

Still, everyone on stage mugs, and everyone has bad lines. Call it a bad theater democracy.

The plot, too farfetched by half, involves the apparent suicide of the resort’s founder, followed by murders via poisoned chocolate candies of resort employees under the helm of new owner Lady Riverdale (Sonya Echols), who happens to also own a See’s Candies-like operation.

Freed, alas, is no better with his plotting than his puns, and it’s easy to smell the standard whodunit game of misdirection a mile--no, two miles--away.

You’d have to be asleep not to guess at least one of the culprits long before they’re revealed; thus the theater’s intermission raffle contest to guess the killer (a true community theater touch) seems too easy and hardly spices up a dreadfully dull affair.

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* “Death by Chocolate,” Cypress Civic Theatre, 5172 Orange Ave.. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Saturday. $7-$10. (714) 229-6796. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Craig Jackman: John Stone

Sonya Echols: Lady Riverdale Bruce

Buonauro: Ed Parlor

Charlie Meyers: Ralph Deadwood

Giovanna Fusco: Margaret Daniels

Lee Parry: Alfred Mellox

Velear Chavez: Dyslexia

A Cypress Civic Theatre Guild production of Paul Freed’s murder mystery. Director: Craig Harreld. Set: Harreld. Lights: George George. Costumes: Camile Coyne. Stage manager: Lisa Heath.