Kazam! Intrepid Inspector Ingrid of Interpol and the Crimson-Caped Killer Caper opens today at 7:30 p.m. at Parkland College’s Second Stage Theatre. The play is riddled with puns, implied mature content, and an overabundance of alliteration. Essentially, if you ever wanted Clue (1985), Batman (1966-68), comic books, slapstick, and mystery, then you owe it to yourself to see Kazam!
At Spring Falls Community Library, the rare edition of Uranium Man #1 is set to be unveiled at midnight at the library’s New Year’s Eve party. The guests, dressed as their favorite super-heroes, have gathered to celebrate and admire this priceless comic book. Little do they know that it also holds a dangerous secret. One by one, we meet the guests: the lecherous Professor Roman Numeral (David Heckman), the spunky librarian Paige Turner (Aubrey Brown), the English graduate student Philomena Folio (Erin Kaufman), the comic’s creator Louise LaPenne (Stacy Walker), the happy hippie Sunshine (Hannah Longest), the library’s gardener/security guard Ivan Hoe (Jacob Smith), and the television star Rex Flexall (Robert Hartmann). As the clock strikes midnight, however, the comic is stolen, a person lies dead, and all of the guests are suspects.
With 1966 coming to a close and 1967 starting with a bang, the intrepid Inspector Ingrid of Interpol (Diane Pritchard) and her trusty companion Dr. Bob (Curt Deedrich) rush to find out who or whom is the murderer, the thief, or both. Helping audiences to keep track of the clues are the Narrator (HeatherAnn Layman) and the Chorus Borus quartet (Gennie Applebee, Courtney Bruner, Tafadzwa Diener, and Samantha Odendaal). They, along with the rest of the cast and crew, keep Kazam! rolling like a river to its dramatic conclusion.
The play was fun. It’s filled with bad puns, self-referential Parkland humor, and ’60s pop-culture references. I wanted more plot in the second act and fewer non-whodunit scenes. There are a bunch of music cues, so the students involved do a great job of hitting them flawlessly.
Written by local Parkland College Professor Kerry Bean and directed by Parkland theatre major Tyler Cook, Kazam! is sold out this weekend. Performances of Kazam! are Thurs. Feb. 9th to Sat. Feb. 11th at 7:30 p.m. along with matinees on Sat. Feb. 11th and Sun. Feb. 12th at 3:00 p.m. You can get your name on the waitlist. For more information about Parkland Theatre’s box office, visit their website.
Image from Parkland Theatre’s website.