The Burden of Spoof

SOMETHING IS WRONG will Shake A Legacy. It starts out fine--we see the traditional Wild West conflicts emerging immediately--the hanging judge is looking for some new sucker to don the marshall's badge, the old lawman having been gunned down shortly after the curtain rises. But then authors Christopher Harding and Robert Mack let loose a torrent of subplots including a twins mix-up a governor's race, a will succession controversy, three romances and a dead heiress masquerading as a bartender.

What the authors have forgotten to throw in is some sort of character or conflict that could unite this mass of undercurrents. Instead they have supplied a lot of witty, if often extraneous numbers, which in turn serve as vehicles for law school puns rather than conveyors for much-needed expositions. Perhaps if the writers had let the heroine of the play explain how she was the mastermind behind all the plotting then Shake A Legacy would have held together. But they didn't. And she didn't. And we are left with a very funny production that goes nowhere.

Law School professor Abram Chayes may take some ribbing in this morning's classes for the hilarious charade cameo he performs as a law school professor trying to evoke some response out of his less than diligent students. But he should take it lightly. He is far and away the greatest comic in the show. John Enteman as a George C. Scottish Judge Hiram Chokum and Bill Wilkins as Professor A.J. Cashner trail Chayes but execute their songs clearly and only occasionally send their jokes ahead via Western-Union.

Richard Hope, not content with simply writing most of the songs in the show, bounces around as a rolly-polly pair of twins, cornering the laugh market whenever he rolls on stage. Only Harriet Kittner, who doubles as Tom Mix, the bartender, and Clementine, the supposedly dead heiress, lacks the lines to develop her comic expertise. As Clementine, the theoretical heroine who falls short of that role because the authors spent so much time developing the surfelt of leading characters. Kittner must restrain her comic abilities. She supplants here talent with an out-of-character solemnity that makes the audience feel gypped out of seeing the only female comic performance in the play.

It is hard not to laugh at some of Hope's songs. After all, a can-can and an Andrews Sisters number and an Astair/Rogers duet could not be more out of place in a nineteenth century saloon. But some of Hope's number breech the gap between hoedown and courtroom lingo to produce some genuinely humorous lines.

In the "Harvard Square Dance" number a transposed Harvard law school professor barks out legalistic calls to his dancing chorus to counterclaim left and counterman right, find a loophole, swing your silent partner, change a venue and make an allegation, waking the dancing drones of the cast for this one number. But the cast doesn't stay awake long, probably because they're tired of parading around a stage. Most of the songs serve as an excuse to bring out the full chorus, and few of the melodies sustain or deserve such a stampede.

Although the writers have chosen to lean on an overdose of in-jokes and law school bards that may make a daytime trek to the Law School a prerequisite for many of the laughs, director Victor Budnik pulls things together coherently enough. If he could only have scrapped a few leads, at little expense to the already loosely conducted plot, then maybe he would have been able to work in the type of situation comedy that need not rely on HLS chumminess to get the laughs. But as it is now, you have to pan through a river of plot lines just to pick out a few comic nuggets.