The Theater: Exit Laughing

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SOMETHING'S AFOOT

Book, music and lyrics by JAMES

MCDONALD, DAVID vos and ROBERT GERLACH

This musical whodunit provides an evening of innocently dotty merriment.

Not that its gags could hold a guttering candle to Neil Simon's. Or that the music and lyrics would be found in Stephen Sondheim's or Richard Rodgers' wastebaskets, let alone their bottom drawers. The book relies loosely on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, never as a spine chiller but as a rib splitter.

Something's Afoot is a thimbleful of nonsense that turns into a flagon of fun.

Any thoroughly unpretentious musical that refuses to take itself seriously drives some critics into attitudes of lofty, and sometimes bogus, condescension. They prefer to ponder the flatulent grandiosities of shows like Pacific Overtures, Rex, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The only question to ponder in Something's Afoot is which guest at a mid-'30s English country manor will be stiffed next, and how. Will the hilarious mode of demise be an exploding balus trade, a poisoned dart, a lethally hid den gas vent or what? As for plot, the maze is the message.

In total comic command is Tessie O'Shea acting like a Margaret Ruther ford come marvelously back to life. Di rector Tony Tanner keeps the rest of the divertingly able cast as nimble as human fleas. It is quite easy to imagine that children will have a particularly happy time at this show, and ditto most of their elders.

T. E. Kalem