Who's There?
Columbo, for Starters

'Chekhov's Rifle'
Greenwich Street Theater

The first line of Alex Ladd's new play, "Chekhov's Rifle," is also the first line of "Hamlet." Well, why not? Mr. Ladd appears to have borrowed everything he could. There's a ghost here, too, but at least it doesn't sound like Hamlet's father; it clacks, like an old mechanical typewriter. Bits of "Macbeth" supply a few laughs; a detective role is obviously drawn from the "Columbo" television movies; Dostoyevsky contributes plot twists and a couple of names; then there is Chekhov himself in a hilarious cameo at the end, and his firearm throughout as both the weapon and the betrayer of its user in this comic murder mystery.

At more than two hours the play is far too long, with too many predictable jokes. But an extraordinary cast under the adroit direction of Nolan Haims makes the production at the Greenwich Street Theater in SoHo by the Lord Strange Troupe (Mr. Ladd is a co-founder) much livelier than one would have thought possible.

Austin Pendleton plays a burned out, scornful playwright forced to rent one of his bedrooms to feed himself. Craig Bachmann, as his lodger, portrays an aspiring actor who stumbles over words of more than two syllables and survives on his girlfriend's credit cards while he two-times her with pairs of bar pickups. George Morafetis makes the young man's agent a leaky sack of clichés wholly unaware that no one in the world except this stupid actor would trust him. The detective is Jess Osuna, who has long experience in crime films and whose cop here makes Peter Falk's Columbo look like a sleek, dynamic executive.

But those guys would not be as funny as they are without frequent interventions by three striking young actors—Veronica Bero, Bridget Flanery and Dawn McGee—who create four women almost as intelligent as they are unbalanced. They do a lot of needed comic heavy lifting.

Now, if only someone could persuade Mr. Ladd to trim at least a good third out of his script.
D. J. R. BRUCKNER