by Geoff Hoff~

On The Air, playing at the Whitefire Theatre, is a charming show, a murder mystery musical comedy, although it is not quite a full musical; there are only two songs in the first act and only two in the second.  The murder mystery also takes a back seat to that shenanigans going on in the studio of radio station KRAP, from where the nightly, live radio drama show “Dark ‘Til Morning” is broadcast.  (It is a little odd that, besides live commercials, it seems this is the only show that is broadcast from this studio.)

The story revolves around the two stars of the radio drama, pompous Walter Wicks (A very funny Michael Tatlock) and Deirdra Banks (Donna Pieroni).  They have both had successful careers (perhaps more imagined than actual, we suspect), have known, worked with and hated each other for many, many years.  They are both resentful that this show is what they have been reduced to in their old age.  They stick with it, though, because it is popular and it pays the bills.  They fight and bicker and try to outdo each other.  They both insist that they are the only thing that makes the show work.

John Moschitta, Jr. plays Manny Lowmax, the man who runs the studio, writes the scripts, abuses his employees and is put upon by all those under him.  Shane Houston plays Jimmy, the studio gofer with high ambitions.  The Cop is played by tall, good-looking comic actor Nicholas Harden.

Almost everyone at the station hates almost everyone else for many reasons, and one of them ends up dead.

The rest of the play is a sort of clumsy Keystone Cops adventure as those left living try hide the body, keep the foul deed from the cops and the listening public, all the while trying to discover which of them did the actual murder.

Ms. Pieroni is a perfect fit for the role of Banks, except that her patrician accent comes and goes, although one could imagine the accent and persona of this fading star are both pretended so that may be okay after all.  She plays it as an ample, imposing, silly, fading diva.  Mr. Tatlock plays the “Shakespearean” actor with all the pomp and pretension that would be expected of a great man fallen on hard times who drinks heavily to get through each humiliating day.

Mr. Moschitta is appropriately gruff and hard bitten as the boss, although he becomes a tad bit fey in the musical numbers.  Mr. Houston, who also wrote the play and directs it, plays the naive but ambitious Jimmy as a sort of exaggerated Jimmy Olsen/Andy Hardy.  He has some very funny moments and his forced enthusiasm is a very good contrast to the antipathy of his fellow radio station-ites.

Mr. Harden as The Cop has a surprisingly silly take on the role and plays the double-takes and mugging of the broad comedy to full effect.

The script is good (not great) with such observations as “With youth comes stupidity”.  Much of the humor is a little long-in-the-tooth, but even some of that is quite funny.  The staging is where the play falls short.  I don’t know if the stage at the Whitefire is shallow or not (I’ve only seen two productions there) but the area they have given themselves to work on — it seems only a few paces from the front lip to the black curtain at the back — is almost wholly inadequate for all the door slamming, hiding, disappearing and running around of the farce.

Mr. Houston also makes the odd choice of using a relatively large portion of the small space for a small table with a radio on the top of it, which he lights, with the rest of the stage dark, for some of the actual broadcasts and commercials.  This might have worked had it not taken up room that could have been used better by the action and had it not been that he also, in the dark, had actors at a microphone on the other side of the stage acting out what we were to have heard on that radio.  It was an interesting idea that really didn’t work.

The first act, where everything is set up,  is a little flat.  The second, where all the door slamming begins in earnest, is much more fulfilling.

Also a problem, during one of the first scenes, the first time we meet Banks and Wicks performing their show, center stage is Jimmy at the sound-effects table.  All the ecoutrement of that table were on display as the audience entered the theatre, leaving us with an excitement about the possibilities of actually seeing the sounds being made there, which could have been fascinating if they were done well, or very funny if they weren’t.  Instead, the sound effects were recorded with Mr. Houston simply (and only sort of) miming the use of the props.  It was a distracting disappointment.

There is a lot about the script and the staging that simply doesn’t make sense (for instance, the body is all tied up with cloth and string, and yet they pretend it is still alive at one point) but much of that can be forgiven in a farce.  It would be nice, if this play were to be developed more and presented on a different stage, to see some of that which is illogical and inconsistent cleaned up.  (And if it’s really a musical, have a few songs, ones that move the plot, such as it is, forward.)

The costumes (not credited in the program) were quite good, very easily evoking each character, especially Ms. Bank’s elegant and over produced gown.  The set, by Mr Houston, was fine as far as it went, clever in some ways.  There were three flats that turned and tipped to represent the studio, the greenroom, the back alley and the roof of the building.

On The Air is performed Saturdays only at 8 p.m. through March 6th, 2010.

The WiteFire Theatre is located at 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91423, between Woodman and Coldwater.

Ticket prices: $20.00

Reservations online at www.plays411.com/ontheair or by phone at (323) 960-4420.