Special to The Telegram

You know those comic melodramas set in an old English country-house full of heraldic devices, suits of armour, hidden treasures in the wainscotting, mortgages to be foreclosed, faithful family retainers, virtuous maidens, bearded villains, and long-lost relatives returned from the Colonies? Well, The Mumberley Inheritance is unabashedly one of those.

The plot involves a geriatric, debt-plagued lord of the manor (Clar Doyle), a diabolical villain in red-lined cloak (Gord Ralp), who has something on everyone and lusts after the virtuous heroine (Sharon Tracey). Our villain is assisted by his cringing accomplice (Kevin Lewis) and resisted by the stout-hearted hero (Mike Coady), with the aid of a long-lost brother returned from the Canadas after six long years to reclaim his erstwhile sweetheart (Jackie Dawe), who just happens to have been recently engaged as a nurse in the Mumberley household.

In the end, as you might expect, the villain is foiled, the family treasure is recovered, and the hero called Rodney Stoutheart prevails, after a prolonged, silent-film chase scene to flickering lights, onstage and through the auditorium. Truth and love triumph. Even the villain's sidekick finds true love with Dotty the Maid (Marianne Butler).

Mounting a lampoon of such a hoary theatrical formula, you need a solidly plausible set, with wainscotting that hides secrets and various architectural orifices from which people can variously emerge - which is a feature you can generally rely upon with a production by this particular company. Designed by Clar Doyle and constructed by the cast and members of the Doyle clan, the well- sculpted and well-dressed set fills the stage effortlessly, elegantly, functionally.

No doubt The Mumberley Inheritance is a far-fetched and unlikely dramatic vehicle. So is a unicycle. The fun consists in watching many and varied unicyclists doing their stuff. It may not cure ringworm or the falling sickness - but it can do you a power of good.

But last night, despite strong production values and strong performances, it did not quite work the magic that it can. In this kind of over-the-top, audience-interactive show, there is one thing you need first and foremost - an audience. Where was everybody? Had they all blown their wad on My Fair Lady? Unfortunately, an audience of 25 or 30 in a large auditorium does not generate the feedback a show like this needs.

Without an audience to respond, the asides and grimaces, the emphatic stage business, the running jokes requiring voices off and/or audience participation, the send-ups of nineteenth-century conventions, these land heavily and sometimes hollowly.

Even with an interactive audience, some of the business is signalled and underlined too heavily for my taste. With the smaller audience, a quicker, more legatto approach might have been preferable. And I could certainly have dispensed with the over- facetious introduction of the macarena.

I enjoyed the production and the performance more than some of these remarks make it sound. I especially relished Clar Doyle's kindly, nostalgic, lecherous old man, Sharon Tracey's virtuous heroine that never jumps out of context, the Pretty Polly Nurse of Jackie Dawe, and the straight-ahead virtue of Mike Coady's Stoutheart. Likewise the lighting effects and the live musical accompaniment to accentuate the jokes, the sentiment and the business.

Perhaps what I am saying is simply that laughter begets laughter, reaction begets reaction. What the production needs most is more people to be laughing along with one another to carry it effortlessly to its conclusion without our counting the fence-posts on the way.

Directed by Kevin Lewis, the Beothuck Street Players production of Warren Graves's The Mumberley Inheritance continues at the Holy Heart of Mary auditorium until Saturday, November 23, starting at 8 pm, with old-fashioned piano accompaniment provided by Brian Way to take you back to the era of melodrama with live musical accompaniment.