Stage Reviews : ‘Roommates’ Resembles a Three-Hour TV Sitcom

Attractive, feisty Kimberly Monroe’s husband has been killed and, with the aid of her wisecracking cousin Venita, she decides to continue operating his Third Eye Detective Agency.

Among the lingering cases are a missing husband and an apparent crackpot who discovered some dubious Egyptian tablets during a California earthquake. The missing husband is something of a red herring (until the too-tidy ending), but the tablets could prove that America was a “twin” to Egypt and was originally settled by black Egyptians.

“Roommates” at the Four Star Theater, the first of the black stage productions to revitalize local mid-size theaters in the coming months, sounds like one of those early Lucille Ball mystery comedies (Patsy Kelly would have played her wiseacre sidekick). It isn’t.

Written by Charles Michael Moore (he also directed with much self-indulgence), the “dramatic comedy” is, at its best, television writing. At its worst, it’s also television writing. In a program note, the playwright says he “hopes that it leaps from the stage to the television screen.” If it does, the TV editor will cut it down to the half-hour length it might work in.

On stage, it runs over three long hours. There’s a lot of filler, including a pointless aerobics dance class where nothing happens except Kimberly’s first meeting with her next love; an equally pointless male stripper number; a superfluous opening song by the star, Bern Nadette Stanis of TV’s “Good Times,” and some interminable scenes that are repetitious and only enlivened by the cast’s mugging attempts to save themselves.

They also try overacting, and that gets as many laughs as the mugging. Even Stanis isn’t immune to the posturing and grimacing. At least it’s in character for her sidekick Venita, played by Synthia L. Hardy with enough spunk to make her laughs honestly gained.

Other deserved laughs, and the evening’s biggest, are won by Steve Gamage--the only member of the company with a real flair for comedy this broad. His slow burns and triple takes are in the classic mold, and he handles each move with finesse.

Virgil Woodfork’s sets are adequate for the agency’s office and the strip joint (other locales are left up to the audience’s imagination), but Tony Carr’s lighting is all over the place and Jeff Gill’s “Creative Sound Design” is at the mercy of a system that sputters and crackles.

Maybe a director other than the playwright could pull the script together, calm the cast down and give “Roommates” the slick, zinging gloss it’s missing at this point. “Roommates” has its moments of fun and could work. But not this way.

At 5112 Wilshire Blvd., Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 3 p.m.; ends July 22. $23-$25; (213) 965-8618.