It’s not often that Denver’s Buntport Theater Company revives a production, so it had better be a good one, don’t you think?

Fortunately, “McGuinn and Murry” is. A noirish intellectual confection that features the performances of two of the company’s six creator-partners, the play is a zoom through the Buntportian analytical-parodical cosmos, serving as an excellent (and hilarious) introduction to the group’s work.

First produced four years ago, the subject of the piece is the detective story – its literary and cinematic cliches. Two slap-happy, underemployed sleuths, clad in 40’s fashion, contemplate an unringing phone. McGuinn (Erik Edborg) is a washed-up, boozy former boxer harboring a shameful secret; Murry (Erin Rollman) is the wisecracking dame who’s the brains of the outfit.

They’re driven to pose each other theoretical mysteries, to keep from getting rusty, as Murry puts it. Vigorous flights of fancy later, Murry decides to top McGuinn once and for all – by getting him to investigate himself for murder.

What follows is a fast-paced series of blackout scenes, propelled by a wry and intimate sense of how those creaky plots work. The shady encounter, the hard-bitten dialogue, the random gunplay’s all there. Like some demented commedia del arte performance, Edborg and Rollman inhabit tough-talking, two-fisted archetypes and race them clownishly through their paces.

The performers walk a tightrope of quick change and rapid switches of identity. Each plays 5 or 6 roles. Edborg dons an eye patch and vanishes into the character of a fussy English playboy named Kermit; Rollman becomes an old, fat gangster – instantly, almost by sheer force of will. It’s astonishing.What propels the entertainment to a greater level is its insistence on constant transformation. Buntport is known for its incredibly inventive staging, and the set here consists entirely (seemingly) of two large office desks, bound together back-to-back on casters. As the actors end a scene, they remain – to revolve, rearrange and transform their office into McGuinn’s home, a bar, and other landscapes. (SamAnTha Schmitz, Hannah Duggan, Brain Colonna and Evan Weissman complete the ensemble, and everyone works together on all the aspects of each Buntport production.)

You never get an easy out with Buntport. There is a climax of sorts – miniature cars chase each other across a pasteboard city, details are cleared up – but there isn’t any emotional revelation at the finish, no heavily stressed moral. In “McGuinn & Murry,” the clockwork winds up, and then it winds itself down, stuttering to a halt.

Buntport has enlisted the local jazz combo The Hoagies to accompany the play on May 15 and 22, and perhaps other dates as the run continues through the end of May. In addition, they’ve scheduled Buntport Movie Nights with noir features on the next two Sundays – “The Big Sleep” on May 18, and “The Thin Man” on May 25. (Free ice cream, too!)

“McGuinn & Murry” is strong spring fare – fast, light and funny.

-Brad Weismann, May 12, 2008, Colorado Daily