Considering the current state of the world, River City Players director Debbie Barnhouse had reservations about staging a play with the word "murder" in the title. But maybe the laughs in the screwball comedy "A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody," opening tonight at the River City Yacht Club, are an antidote to grim times.

The play harkens back to comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, like "It Happened One Night" or "My Man Godfrey," the latter starring William Powell and Carole Lombard. In fact, the male lead, recent Iowa transplant Wayne Heiser, resembles Powell physically and vocally.

According to this movie view of the world, rich people were so bored in the 1930s and 1940s that they played strange games with each other.

Heiser plays the moneyed Matthew Perry, whose marriage to his wife, Julia (Kate Kruse), has so lost its zing that he openly resolves on New Year's Eve to murder her by the next New Year's Eve. All the easier for him to go off to exotic places like Aruba.

She resolves to have sex with the butler, Buttram (Rich Behring).

In minutes, the family pet has succumbed to death by pate. And in no time, a detective named Plotnik (Lloyd Williams) is investigating the mysterious deaths of eight people who have been unfortunate enough to visit the Perry mansion.

Meanwhile the Perrys' daughter, the beautifully dumb Bunny (Natasha Storey-Ford), has fallen in love with the earnest lawyer Donald (Joe Class) and there's not only a murder but a wedding to plan. Bunny soon wants to call off the wedding "because all the wedding guests are dying."

Who is killing these people? Plotnik thinks any one of them could be the culprit. It could even be the butler.

"A Little Murder" holds some surprises and no shortness of witty repartee. The couples work very well together, and both Behring and Williams have moments to shine.

Barnhouse's husband, Randy, is the assistant director. The stage manager is Sally Finch. The smart set is by Tim Roth.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182