Murder for Two: theater review by Adam Feldman

Second Stage Uptown’s new offering, Murder for Two, is a zany musical whodunit of agreeably modest intent: It doesn’t aspire to kill much more than time, and it succeeds. Brett Ryback, floppy-haired and faux-sincere, plays Marcus, a neophyte small-town policeman investigating a homicide; the victim is a famous local novelist, shot while arriving at his own surprise party, and any of the guests in attendance might have wanted him dead. (He has been spilling their secrets for years in his books.) In the gimmick that gives the show its name and much of its charm, ten Clue–style suspects at the scene—including the dead man’s dotty Southern wife, his eager niece, a gruff doctor, a femme fatale and three prepubescent boys—are played by a single actor, the rangy Jeff Blumenkrantz, in a mercurial stream of camp-inflected accents, props and mannerisms.