Showtime

What: Murder At The Howard Johnson's

Who: Theatre Burlington

Where: Drama Centre (Central Park), 2311 New St., Burlington

When: Continues Sept. 25 through 27 and Oct. 2 through 4

Tickets: 905-637-1728

How do you make sense of a trio of hotel room confrontations among a harried husband, a hot- to-trot wife and a horny dentist with power in his drill? The answer is, you don't. That's the whole point.

Murder at the Howard Johnson's -- a lame excuse for a farce -- lasted four performances on Broadway.

Well, it's not a New York play.

Resuscitated for dinner theatre, this goofy trifle has made pots of money for its playwrights Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark.

Unfortunately in Burlington, there's no roast beef in sight, no groaning smorgasbord, just heaps of cooked ham.

Now don't get me wrong, ham is very necessary in a bum play like this. Right from the get-go it poses peculiar problems.

You can't take it for truth.

What you do instead is play it for all it's worth. That means fast and furious with plenty of physical stuff. Somehow you've got to make audiences forget how silly the thing is.

In Burlington, we have too much time to ponder the play's foolish premise. Why?

Director Vince Guerriero hasn't created enough tension in the sexual shenanigans here that ought to propel this comedy forward.

Things need to be more outrageous, more frantic and well, farcical. Trying to give the play a root in reality just doesn't work.

Things work best when silliness takes over. When hubby Paul allows himself to be tied in a chair ready to be murdered, we giggle. When dentist Harry gets a shot of novocaine in the rump and limps round the room like a hippo in heat, we howl.

Such moments do not save Murder at the Howard Johnson's from floundering long before its silly characters vacate the hotel.

Lynn Kaspowitsch has fun making a hot patootie wife into a carbon copy of any number of TV characters.

She plays the dumb bunny perfectly, with just a hint of the notion she's probably sly as a fox.

She's not matched by her male partners, a stiff John Koetsier and forced Quentin Brayley-Berger. Badly dressed in costumes that don't really fit, they look uncomfortable for most of the ho-hum evening.

Lawrie Bonanno's sterile hotel room set is bland enough to be a Motel 6, never mind a handy Ho-Jo's.

Like Bobrick's Wally's Cafe, Weekend Comedy and Norman, Is That You?, Murder at the Howard Johnson's is second rate, half-hour sitcom, stretched mercilessly.

I kept waiting for a pesky commercial or two to relieve the tedium.

Gary Smith has written on theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for more than 25 years.