The Horror, the Hilarity

During Act Two, Lord Edgar and Alcazar (Wahl) — the skeevy mummy peddler and his Egyptian guide — walk into the audience while holding kerosene lanterns, seeking to plunder an ancient tomb. When they hit the jackpot in Irma Vep's most hilarious scene, Wahl becomes Pev Amri, a mummy princess whom Lord Edgar revives. Felix dresses in the lurid vestments of a priest of Anubis and what I can only describe as a Carmen Miranda headdress from a laundry basket, donning them and scampering across the stage like Aleister Crowley on meth. The mummy, dressed like a pole-dancing Cleopatra, pops out of a "sarcofagus" and clears the dust from her pipes by crying out, "Cairo ... Cairo ... practor!" Lord Edgar returns to Mandacrest with his priceless find.

The final act opens with Jane dusting the mummy's casket in the drawing room, where a fresh painting of Lady Enid now hangs. Soon the pair are plucking the theme from the movie Deliverance on dueling dulcimers. A morose Enid remarks that the painting lacks the varnish of purity she once had. "Virginity is the balloon in the carnival of life," the maid retorts. "It vanishes with one prick."

A final confrontation between Jane and Enid and Nicodemus and Edgar at the cusp of revelation involves several frantic chase scenes, a meat ax-wielding villain, a prisoner buried behind a wall, and a whirlwind rendezvous between Lady Enid and the wolf.

Crisply directed by David Arisco, its costumes magically engineered by the sensational Mary Lynne Izzo, and gleefully performed by the comically gifted John Felix and Tom Wahl, The Mystery of Irma Vep is a delirious descent into madness that sticks to the ribs and never lets go.