Last night, due to a curious set of circumstances involving a peroxide blonde in a sundress, I found myself at a low-budget audience participation musical in the red light district by Madison Square Garden. It wasn’t quite dinner theater in Omaha, and there was no tossing of rice, but The People vs. Mona encourages the audience to add courtroom sound effects:

… Mona, the owner of the Frog Pad, is accused of bludgeoning her husband of 10 hours, C. C. Katt, to death with an electric guitar. [Link]

This mindless but genial murder comedy, a small-town Georgia version of Chicago, was way more fun at $20 than Neil LaBute’s latest off-Broadway bore, In A Dark, Dark House. I was close enough to see the miniature bud mikes hidden in the parting of hairlines and concealed like hearing aids.

Marcie Henderson was a firecracker as a blind musician like Ray Charles with the olfaction of a bloodhound. As the eponymous accused, Mariand Torres crooned a bit in untranslated Spanish and danced salsa on one, a B&T beat in NYC. The funny and talented Omri Schein played an old court bailiff in droopy glasses and high pants. Judging from the torrents of sweat, Richard Binder was the second-hardest-working man in show biz. The show pumped out waves of good cheer: no character actually meant another harm, ethnic music and traditions were on full display, and the attractive multiculti cast was its own Benetton ad.

Then, like a bucket of cold water to the face, that strangled, singsong, faux Indian accent. And this was in New York, in a production so affable, one of the musicians strums a ukelele. One of Schein’s characters is Patel from the Santa Claus Motel. He’s not one-dimensional; he’s a huge Georgia football fan and leads a round of Bulldog cheers. But it was striking how much care was paid to Southern, black and Latino cultures in contrast.

The audience knows and demands better. Talented minority actors fill the pipeline. Meanwhile, Apu Sellers soldiers on, a badly-drawn buffoon burrowing into Americana.