‘Stage Fright’ Scares Away a Fun Opportunity

On the stage of a dilapidated Broadway theater, two actors tie up a drama critic and threaten to kill him. There are worse setups for revenge comedy, even if the premise recalls a few other titles, among them the 1973 Vincent Price critics-must-die gore fest “Theater of Blood.”

Unfortunately, all we have here is a crabby, wit-free affair titled “Stage Fright,” written by the playwright and critic Charles Marowitz, directed by Charles Marowitz, now at the Malibu Stage Company, whose artistic director is a fellow by the name of Charles Marowitz.

Clearly the actors are the problem.

Not really. Really, they’re not. Marowitz’s cast of three--Nan Martin, Alan Mandell and Jeremy Lawrence--musters what sniveling panache it can under the circumstances. But the repartee settles for every limp observation about actors’ egos and critics’ venom you’ve already heard. Throughout “Stage Fright” the actress played by Martin, a bitter and oft-panned performer of the Old School, quotes from past reviews she has received from the vitriolic critic played by Lawrence. If the zingers quoted are the best this guy came up with, he really does deserve an early retirement.

The critic, implied to be New York’s most fearsome, goes by the name of F.F. Charnick, a not-quite anagram of former New York Times first-stringer Frank Rich. Charnick has been invited to the theater to be interviewed for a documentary on actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth. A Miss Leamington (Martin, in a wig) offers him wine before the taping. But there’s knockout juice in the stuff, and when Charnick awakens in Act 1, Scene 2, he has been trussed up with ropes, his neck now graced by a noose. Leamington reveals herself to be Mitzi Crenshaw, whose husband Denis Michaelson (Mandell, hearty and game) has toured with Mitzi for years, often to the published disdain of Charnick.

In his own careers as critic, director, playwright and author, Marowitz surely has collected more than enough observations for two acts of cheap, nasty fun. He takes aim at the actors--Mitzi and Denis are elocutionary-minded fuds who might be at home, say, in a Peter Hall Shakespeare--and at himself, as when Mitzi lights into “obscure plays filled with violence and nudity, sex and symbolism,” the sort of thing associated with Marowitz’s own theater work, dating back to the “Theatre of Cruelty” days in London.

So where’s the fun in this exercise? The “Sleuth”-derived reversals and twists hit your forehead, ping, bounce off the floor and roll away. The jokes feel stridently “mod” and ultra-’60s, as when un-p.c. Mitzi observes that “fags are always experimenting with straight sex. Trying to see if they can maneuver their way across the border.”

I don’t know. Have you heard the phrase “straight sex” lately?

* “Stage Fright,” Malibu Stage Company, 29243 Pacific Coast Highway (land-side), Malibu. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinite run. $10-$20. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours.

Nan Martin: Mitzi Crenshaw

Jeremy Lawrence: F.F. Charnick

Alan Mandell: Denis Michaelson

Written and directed by Charles Marowitz. Scenic design by Vincent Rocca. Costumes by Julie Paar. Lighting by Christina Hulen. Stage manager Karen Osburn.