Murder For Two – Location, Tickets, Reviews

Posted on November 11, 2013

Murder for Two is a fast and silly new musical now playing at New World Stages, straight from its acclaimed and sold out run at Second Stage Uptown. It’s a classic campy murder mystery (think Clue) with lots of broad performances, har-dee-har one-liners and an enormous line-up of suspects. Familiar, yes, but Murder for Two has a kicker – the whole thing is performed with just two actors and a baby grand.

Armed with old-fashioned pep and considerable stamina, Jeff Blumenkrantz and Brett Rylack blaze through 90 minutes of screwball schtick, with Rylack as the aw-shucks would-be detective, Blumenkrantz playing the half-dozen murder suspects (and somehow avoiding whiplash in the process). Both take turns on the piano.

Blumenkrantz is the evening’s star, as his feverish character swapping becomes more of a mental and physical fitness test than a performance. We’d like to imagine that he and Jefferson Mays, who masters a similar split-personality shapeshifting act down the street in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, get together at the same post-show bar every night to console each other as they catch their breath.

Critics enjoyed Murder for Two when it was farther uptown. Everyone seems to agree that Blumenkrantz and Ryback are a winning duo, with Blumenkrantz earning extra kudos for his dizzying and hilarious portrayals of the murder suspects (Variety called him “a performer so loose-limbed and lanky he resembles an unstrung marionette”), though a few reviews do lament that the show is little more than hokey and uninspired disposable entertainment (with a score that you probably won’t be humming on the way home). Murder For Two‘s bare-bones approach promises a night of inventive imagination and brass-tacks musical comedy, but – with due respect to Blumenkrantz’s efforts – the show could stand to be a bit more clever.

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