On Theater:

Take equal parts of Cole Porter and Agatha Christie, mix them in with TV’s “Love Boat,” stir vigorously for nearly two decades and you have the Rose Center Theater production of “Murder on the High C’s.”

Tim Nelson, director of Huntington Beach High School’s Academy for the Performing Arts (who brings several members of his troupe and orchestra to the production), and Scott K. Ratner, an inventive comic/playwright, are two veteran showmen each with his own following.

They’ve lured some of the best talents and voices of their respective groups to this glorified mystery dinner theater presentation (without the dinner but with an expansive stage and a lively orchestra under the baton of Nelson, who also doubles on flute).

Ratner and Nelson first hatched “Murder” in 1991 and have been honing it ever since, including a performance at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The current three-weekend engagement showcases their musical and comical lunacy to fine advantage.

The setting is a cruise ship in 1933, right out of Porter’s “Anything Goes.” Only on this voyage, what’s “going” are the passengers as a mysterious “phantom” begins knocking people off one, two and even three at a time.

It’s up to the renowned criminologist (a well-disguised Ratner) to solve the mystery, while a children’s book author (Dolores Kimble) tags along and ultimately upstages the master. The suspects are the survivors — and that list grows smaller every minute — and Ratner excels at showcasing his character’s clueless pomposity.

Some singing voices truly shine — despite the theater’s uncooperative sound system. Tricia Griffin-Marles is in great form as the cruise director, as is Jenny Rose Hobbs-Hunter as the society lass who falls for a common sailor (Darren Thomas) to the dismay of her stuffy mother (Sarah Meals).

The best voice in the cast is that of Carrie Theodossin, cast appropriately as a singing star, but her light is snuffed out too early following her terrific solo, “Why Won’t They Leave Me Alone?” Meals and Ron Grigsby (as a shifty car salesman) also have a rousing comic duet titled “I’m No Snob.”

The romantic ballad “Standing at the Rail” by Hobbs-Hunter and Thomas might have been moving, but the opening night audience could hardly tell, since the orchestra drowned them out continually. Spinster sisters Sylvia Tomaselli Nelson and Mary Murphy Nelson team up for a laugh-inducing number, “The Butler Did It.”

Perky Sami Biardi (who’s just been cast in the Debbie Reynolds role in the Academy’s “Singin’ in the Rain”) turns the cruise vessel into the Good Ship Lollipop with her upbeat tapping tempo. Captain Dale Jones seethes with repeatedly slow burns and thoughts of home, while Tim Thorn offers considerable comedy as a meddlesome medico.

Lightweight as it may be, “Murder on the High C’s” is great fun with some terrific voices and imaginative story lines. Homicide never was quite so amusing.

Golden West College will hold auditions for its revival of “Grease” at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday in the college’s Mainstage Theater.

Martie Ramm Engle is directing, and the show will be staged April 30 through May 9. Visit www.gwctheater.com.

If You Go

What: “Murder on the High C’s”

Where: Rose Center Theater, 14140 All American Way, Westminster

When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays (except Feb. 13), 2 p.m. Sundays until Feb. 21. Special pre-show dinner at 6 p.m. Feb. 12

Cost: $17 to $22; $45 for dinner and show Feb. 12

Call: (714) 793-1150, ext. 1

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.