Special Events

Audio Description and Dramaturge Talkback:

Join CATCO at the 2 pm performance on Sunday, June 13, for an audio-described performance with free headset rental. After the show, explore the context and background of the show with a discussion lead by dramaturge James Bailey.

$11 at 11 Performances:

Attend a play mid-week at mid-day, and only pay $11* to see the show! Our $11 at 11 days for this play are:

Wednesday, June 9 - 11 am
Wednesday, June 16 - 11 am

*plus $0.50 restoration fee

What are People Saying About it?

Dispatch Critic Michael Grossberg Gives CATCO's Irma Vep a Rave Review!

"CATCO's 'Irma Vep' a frightfully fun time"

"a hilarious and horrifyingly good production"

"an ideal fit for fun summer entertainment"

"shows off the polished maturity and dexterity of two CATCO veterans who know their comic stuff and precisely when to overplay it"

       --Michael Grossberg, The Columbus Dispatch

Click Here to read the full review!
 

Key Quotes from CATCO's 1990 Production:

"Anyone out for a good laugh, or for that matter, a nice scream, would have to be mad - Mad, I tell you! - to miss Vep"

"It's a quick-changing recipe for quirky comedy, madcap melodrama and Gothic shtick"

"Quoth the critic: Encore!"
      --Michael Grossberg, The Columbus Dispatch, in his review of CATCO's 1990 production

Reviews from other productions:

Named Best Play of the Year by Time Magazine and the New York Times

"Farcical tour de force"
     --Los Angeles Times

"Wildly ridiculous to the dizzily sublime"
     --Los Angeles Times

"Even a bouquet of wolfsbane could not keep laughter from the door."
     --The New York Times

Read full reviews:
NY Times original 1984 review (registration required)

Who's the Playwright?

Charles Ludlam

After graduating from Hofstra University with a B.A. in Dramatic Literature, Charles Ludlam founded The Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967. He was writer, director and actor for the Company, also teaching and staging productions for colleges and universities, including Yale and Carnegie Mellon. Like The Mystery of Irma Vep, many of Ludlam's plays are parodies of gothic novels, Shakespeare, Wagner, old movies and anything else he felt audiences would find humorous. Ludlam received four Obie Awards, the last one two weeks before he died in May 1987.

CHARLES LUDLAM
Photo by Christopher Scott
From David Kaufman, Ridiculous:
The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam.
Applause Theatrical and Cinema Books: 2002.
 

Play Notes:

Charles Ludlam clearly was well versed in traditional literature and in popular culture, and his plays are often a heady mixture of both. Take for instance two dramas in which he won accolades for acting, Camille (1973) and Galas (1983). The former Ludlam billed as “a travesty” on the Dumas story, and those who reported on seeing the short, hairy-chested Ludlam as the romantic heroine found his performance to be both hysterically funny and heart-breakingly sad. Yes, it could be called a drag show but as Ludlam said: “I pioneered the idea that female impersonation could be serious. I became known as the actor who does real acting in drag” (p. 40). Ludlam also shone as the diva in Galas, in which a Callas-like heroine, bereft of career and love, enacts the tragic finale of Madama Butterfly. The play and his performance were named by Time magazine and The New York Times as being among the season’s best.

Ludlam followed Galas, a large ensemble show, with The Mystery of Irma Vep (1984), starting with the vaudeville idea of a quick-change piece in which two actors play all the parts. It is a romp that makes great demands on the performers. “Irma Vep was a stretch for us as actors,” Ludlam wrote, “a feat that has left us changed forever and for the better” (p. 132).

The play’s subtitle, “A Penny Dreadful,” refers to sensational tales sold in parts, a penny each, in 19th century London. With urban growth and rising literacy rates, a market existed for popular fiction, especially for lurid tales. Writers might toss cannibalism, incest, insanity, vampires and werewolves into the same serialized plot with scant regard for style or credible stories and characters.

While creating a witty version of the lurid tale, Ludlam drew heavily from more recent popular culture, especially movies. Most obvious are references to Rebecca, the 1940 Hitchcock film, adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s romance. The setting Mandacrest (echoing Rebecca’s Manderley), the introduction of a new wife, Lady Enid, and her uneasy relationship with the servants, the questions about Irma’s past—all are a zany reworking of Rebecca. Other Hollywood stories seasoning the mix surely include The Mummy and a variety of vampire and werewolf films. In the dialog, you may hear bits of Ibsen’s Ghosts and FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát, some Shakespeare, a little Poe, a dash of Wilde, as well as hoary music hall gags. But likely you will be too caught up in the plot’s twists and turns to puzzle over Ludlam’s borrowings, and you will be amazed by the actors—are there really only two?—and their quick transformations.

--Page references are to: Charles Ludlam. Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly. Steven Samuels, ed. New York, 1992.

--James Bailey, Dramaturge

Selected Production History:

• Westside Theatre, NYC- Sept 1998- July 1999 (off Broadway premiere)
  • The production won the 1999 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, along with Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Outstanding Revival of a Play.
• Ridiculous Theatrical Company, NYC- 1984-1986 (world premiere)
  • Ludlam and Quinton won the 1985 Obie Award for Ensemble Performance
  • The "Cast and Crew" won a Special Drama Desk Award.