Entertainment

Beating a dead ‘Moose’

It took nearly three decades and countless therapy sessions, but I finally thought I was over the post-traumatic stress of having suffered through the original 1983 Broadway production of “Moose Murders.” This notorious flop that has come to be the archetype for theatrical disasters — it closed on opening night — had finally become a faded memory.

But in the words of Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. They, in this case, being the Beautiful Soup Theater Collective, presenting a revival that has been “shamelessly revised” by playwright Arthur Bicknell. Revised? Where’s the fun in that?

Please don’t be tempted by the prospect of belatedly becoming a part of theatrical history. After all, this is the show that critic Frank Rich declared would ensure that “there will always be two groups of theatergoers in the world: those who have seen ‘Moose Murders’ and those who have not.” While I’m proud to be in the first group, it’s my duty to prevent needless suffering among everyone in the other.

This ramshackle production — the original at least had an impressive two-level set — doesn’t provide the sort of campy badness for which you might hope. Instead, it’s just stultifyingly bad — 2 1/2 hours of tedious farce that feels like a week. Amateurishly staged and performed, it somehow manages to make the terrible material even worse. For the sake of everyone involved, none of their names will be provided here.

For those masochists requiring a plot summary, the play is set in a remote lodge in the Adirondacks on a stormy night, where several eccentric characters are picked off one by one by a murderer who appears to be an ax-wielding maniac wearing a moose head. Among the potential victims are a married pair of entertainers, one blind, the other tone-deaf; a heavily bandaged quadriplegic; a Teutonic nurse; a tap-dancing little girl with a fondness for vodka martinis; and a caretaker sporting an Indian headdress.

The Agatha Christie-style mayhem is punctuated by witless dialogue on the order of “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled and titty f – – ked!” To be fair, there was one line that did get a hearty laugh from the otherwise comatose audience: “It’s a wonder he managed to stay unconscious through all of this . . . should we envy him?”

The playwright has recently published a memoir about his ill-fated Broadway experience. The good news is that now he’ll have enough material for a juicy new chapter.