Pink Elephants, a world premiere musical billed as a "Perry Mason" episode by way of Agatha Christie and "The Dick Van Dyke Show," opens an Off-Off Broadway run Sept. 6 at The Slipper Room, a Lower East Side watering hole. "One bar, one night, one dead body, eight suspects and a whole lot of highjinks," is the way the film-noir musical farce by writer director D'Arcy Dollinger is described in press notes. John Paolillo choreographs and Ben Morss is musical director.

Performances play 8 PM Thursday nights through Oct. 25.

The musical is "fueled by a stereophonic, jazz-infused rock quartet" and a cast including Candis Cayne, Mario Diaz, Carter Cochran, Sherie Weinstein, Ellen Halsted, Clayton Smith, Danielle Gerardo Alex Keomurjian, John Fico and Kathy Fenker.

The plot, according to the announcement, goes something like this: "It's the summer of 1961 in Manhattan. The city pulses and writhes with jazz and liquor. It's a not-so-typical night at the Slipper Room, a neighborhood bar on the Lower East Side, when Sylvia Chase, the vicious gossip columnist, is murdered. As Detective Cunningham (Cochran), a gritty Sam Spade-like anti-hero, questions the drunken suspects, he gets more than he bargained for. As each suspect recounts the evening's events, the audience enters a series of cinematic flashbacks, each one a different 'killer' song and dance. Accusations fly, and so do the one-liners, in this hard-boiled musical that proves there's still plenty of life yet in the post-Charles Ludlum stage camp."

Pink Elephants is produced by Back It Up Productions and the Slipper Room. Tickets are $15 and are available at the Slipper Room, 167 Orchard Street at Stanton Street, on the day of the show. Call (212) 675-5782 for reservations.

— By Kenneth Jones