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Theater: Tour de Farce

THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP by Charles Ludlam

A melancholy fog shrouded the moors the night Lord Edgar brought his bride to Mandacrest. Portents of dread creaked in every dank corner of the ancient manor. The bride's sepulchral maid remained loyal beyond the grave to the first Lady Hillcrest, whose portrait was known to bleed when a stray bullet punctured the canvas. On nights when a full moon peeked through the clouds, Lord Edgar's Karloffian butler showed a disconcerting tendency to sprout wolfs hair.

And in a vault behind the bookcase, the cries of...

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RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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