The original reviews for Arthur Bicknell’s 1983 historic flop Moose Murders are a delight to read.  The play is quite possibly the most famous flop in Broadway history, opening and closing in the same night, and the reviews are filled with delightful poison like Brendan Gill’s comment that the play “would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas.”[1] 

Yet, even at the time, there was a sense that the play and its failure were significant.  The programme of Big Lies’ production at Bats quotes Frank Rich when he proclaims, “From now on there will always be two groups of theatergoers in the world: those who have seen Moose Murders and those who have not.”

The joy of the show (and it is joyful) is in watching something fail earnestly and spectacularly, like the YouTube video of a cat trying to jump on a ceiling fan blade.  It’s the humour of FAIL memes and The Room;schadenfreude of the highest (or lowest) order.  And Big Lies’ production sustains that humour for Moose Murder’s two hour run time. 

The script itself defies description aside from saying it is preposterous.  Moose Murders was meant to be a murder mystery /farce, but as far as I can tell, not a single action within the play is dictated by the logic of murder mystery or farce. 

The basic plot is that the wealthy Holloway family has bought The Wild Moose Lodge deep in the Adirondacks (whose egregious mispronunciation is my favourite joke in the show) in order to find solitude while the quadriplegic father of the family recovers from a fall.  They are joined by Joe Buffalo-Dance, the lodge’s now unemployed caretaker, and Snooks and Howie Keene, now also unemployed Borscht Belt singers.  Then, dun dun DUN, murrrrderrr happens.  And other stuff. 

At one point a mummified quadriplegic kicks – yes, kicks – a murderer dressed in a moose costume.  A blind man tries to shoot the same moose-wearing murderer.  There’s a slightly too affectionate relationship between mother and son, and transitory attempts at writing 70s slang.  And out-of-nowhere reminders of blindness.  And the not actually American Indian caretaker reveal.  It’s baffling.  And fantastic.

The show works best when we’re let in on the joke and the action.  We’re given some things to do as an audience, like yelling at the moose when it appears or gasping at lightning.  They do a great job of revealing the hollowness of the tropes used and get us used to participating.  I love it and wish it went further.  It is almost 20 minutes into the action before we get our first shout or gasp.

The biggest laughs come when the actors are trying to succeed despite all the things that make them fail, such as when Alayne Dick’s Nurse Dagmar, all smouldering faux-sensuality and pan-European accent, tries to seduce, well, everybody. Or Alex Wilson’s deadpan readings of ridiculous lines in a voice reminiscent of the Pak ‘N Save guy. 

Sometimes the parody feels misguided, such as Rose Howells’ precocious young Gay Holloway (amazing character name), whose dance antics overpower the scene rather than feeding the absurdity.  There are some rare moments of ‘show failure’ that are too clearly pre-planned for the joke to pay off. 

I think why these few moments don’t work for me is that this production of Moose Murders sometimes feels like it is pulled in too many directions at once.  The directors’ note mentions The Room and Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries as inspirations, and those are two pieces of media whose creators (and presenters) are trying to do vastly different things.  Guest’s actors know that their characters are incompetent. His characters don’t, however, and his films constantly play with these dual levels of awareness.  The Room is pretty much a straight-up bad film where none of the people in it know that it is a bad film – though the presenting cinemas (and audience) sure do. 

My personal preference is for the Guestian dual layers of presentation, and when the actors and design team commit to this there are moments of pure brilliance. Alayne Dick and Baz Macdonald are pitch-perfect in their self-aware send-ups of the script and bad acting tropes.  Their asides and lone partner scene are highlights of the show, as they duel to connect either with each other or the audience at all the wrong moments.  It’s all the more admirable given that Macdonald is often upstaged by the best darn comb-over toupee this side of Donald Trump. 

The end of the show is a deliberately confused muddle of fake-outs, double-crosses, and non sequitur reveals, played to the hilt with that over-earnest commitment I so crave.  I have no idea what is going on, but I do not care.  It is so bad that it is masterful again. I really enjoy this show, though perhaps not for the reasons the original creators intended, but certainly for the reasons Big Lies do.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer