‘Columbo’ gets a new wrinkle

Pass the raincoat. Columbo is making an appearance minus Peter Falk.

In “Prescription Murder,” which opened Friday at the West Valley Playhouse in Canoga Park, the famous detective is played by Bob Van Dusen.

A Falkless Columbo is not unprecedented. The first Columbo was actor Bert Freed in a one-hour live TV special in 1961. That show’s writers, Richard Levinson and William Link, then wrote “Prescription Murder,” which opened in San Francisco with Thomas Mitchell as the detective. It played in several other cities, but creative differences between the writers and the producer halted it before it reached New York.

The TV version of “Prescription Murder” introduced Falk in the role in 1968, and the series began in 1971. Although the play has been produced by some amateur groups, it has generally fallen off the media map.

For the West Valley production, Link (partner Levinson died in 1987) rewrote the ending to conform to the TV movie’s. Now he’s negotiating with a producer about a possible tour of the revised play.

Meanwhile, Van Dusen, 49, is fielding the coat and the questions. “I stink at impressions,” he says -- so don’t expect an imitation.

There is at least one major difference between him and Falk, whose loss of an eye as a child led to his patented squint. “Both my eyes are working now,” Van Dusen says, “ ‘cause I had that laser surgery.”

-- Don Shirley