BACKSTAGE MURDER

Half a lifetime after she hung up her ballet slippers to marry and raise a family, Lindy Haggerty is back again as Lindy Graham, filling in for her injured friend Biddy McFee as rehearsal director for the Jeremy Ash Dance Company. The young corps is vibrant, choreographer David Matthews’s new Carmina Burana is stunning, the performers are all thoroughly professional—except for aging prima ballerina Carlotta Devine, whose cruelty and bad humor probably poison the atmosphere for all of Connecticut. Carlotta will have to be killed, of course—attacked with a prop candelabrum—but the extended postponement of her demise is only the first clichÇ in this ruthlessly cheerful debut. While she’s waiting, Lindy will note the obligatory uncomfortable secrets: is business manager Jack Sullivan skimming the company’s budget? Who caused the accident that sent stage manager Peter Dowd’s sister Andrea from the dance stage to a nursing home? Why is Jeremy Ash determined to keep Carlotta on? Even after the cops lug the corpse away, clichÇs come faster than pliÇs. “This wasn’t a book,” Lindy will reassure herself as she hastens to a rendezvous on a dark deserted stage. “There was always a scene like this,” she’ll think as the climax looms. And, most aptly, of the criminal’s confession: “Bad dialogue.” Fans of Compromising Positions and its ilk may share Lindy’s feeling that “except for the murder and getting pushed down the trapdoor, this has been the most fun I’ve had in years.”