If there was an award for best performance as a dead man in a stage musical, Ralph Johnson of Scripps Ranch Theatre’s “Lucky Stiff” would be a shoo-in. The veteran San Diego actor spends the whole show playing a corpse, most of the time in a wheelchair with hat, sunglasses and stone face.
“Lucky Stiff” is based on the 1983 novel by Michael Butterworth titled “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” Frequent collaborators Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty turned that book into a musical five years later.Scripps Ranch Theatre’s “Lucky Stiff” is a co-production with Oceanside Theatre Company and will move to OTC’s Brooks Theatre next month after this current engagement ends.
That’s not all. If Harry doesn’t follow the specifications to a tee, the six mil will go to a charity -- the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn. Deciding that anything’s better than a life selling shoes, Harry heads for Monte Carlo, pushing his deceased uncle around in a wheelchair all the way. The funniest come from Weisz and Bordieri with his “Phone Call” to his annoyed wife back in America. As the crooning emcee of a casino cabaret, Bob Himlin could be a French-speaking cousin of Bill Murray’s lounge lizard character . Olivia Pence goes all out as temptress Dominique du Monaco .