In The Mystery of Irma Vep, by Charles Ludlam, two actors play a haunted household’s worth of servants, masters, werewolves, mummies, and more in a tale that riffs on everything from the Brontës to Poe to more schlock horror flicks than you can shake a bloody severedleg at. Herein, a who’s who in the anagrammatic Irma Vep (ahem: “vampire”).
 

Chris Sullivan Erik Hellman
CHRIS SULLIVAN
plays Nicodemus Underwood: a lame farmhand who sounds like the love child of Peter Lorre and Mr. Magoo
ERIK HELLMAN
plays Jane Twisden:
Jane Eyre, minus the selflessness, plus a bloody hatchet and a withering postmodern command of irony
and
Lady Enid Hillcrest:
Edgar’s second wife, aka Vep’s necrophilic replacement

and
Lord Edgar Hillcrest:
Heathcliff meets Roderick Usher meets Vincent Price meets Abbott and Costello

and
Alcazar:
an exotic Egyptian from central casting—or is he?
and
the titular Irma Vep:
the late mistress of the manor, who, in death, remains a total bit—er, character with bite

 

GO: Previews Nov 12 – 20; $24 – $40. Regular run Nov 21 – Dec 13; $38 – $56. Court Theatre, 5535 S Ellis. courttheatre.org