Old times Red Herring; Quartet BY CAROLYN CLAY

Playwright Michael Hollinger has a lot of fish to fry in Red Herring (at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston through March 19). The clever little play is a noir satire, a Cold War spy spoof, a murder mystery, a combination of hard- and soft-boiled love stories, a mock-up for CSI: Boston Harbor, and an ironic template for Rodgers & Hammerstein. But even with all those dramaturgical kippers stuffed into its hold, Hollinger’s herring repository is a pretty lightweight vessel, kept bobbing in its area debut by a likable, comically skilled cast taking on multiple roles and accents, under the brisk if cartoony direction of Courtney A. O’Connor, on a pier-backed jumble of a set by Brynna Bloomfield.

Sarah Newhouse plays determined Boston detective Maggie Pelletier in the 1952-set work, which begins with her tumbling out of bed with her G-man boyfriend, Frank Keller (Barlow Adamson), to head for the harbor, where a corpse has been found floating. The body of Russian fisherman Andrei Borchevsky (Richard Snee) is identified by his landlady, Mrs. Kravitz (Leslie Dillen), who is definitely not to be trusted. Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin, Lynn (Allison Clear), the pert daughter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, is becoming engaged to bow-tied young physicist James (Marc Harpin), who simultaneously presents her with a big rock and confides that he’s a Soviet spy. Well, those are a dime a dozen in Hollinger’s scheme, with almost everyone but the gumshoes involved in an effort to smuggle microfilm from Los Alamos to the Russians in a hunk of Velveeta cheese.

The play is written in short, punchy scenes that parody the geekiness, detective fiction, and espionage intrigues of the Eisenhower era, though the plot is arbitrary to the core. (McCarthy’s only child was adopted in 1957, just months before the red-baiting senator’s death.) Newhouse and Adamson provide a soupçon of reality as wise-cracking lonely hearts come late to love and trying to land their spies and murderers in time to take a free trip to Havana. Leslie Dillen, in a series of bad wigs, brings caricaturing skills to square Midwestern mom Mrs. McCarthy, the lusting landlady, and the proprietress of a bridal shop that sees gunfire. Richard Snee is both soulful and funny as the Russian fisherman with a weakness for spoon-fed vodka and "Bali Ha’i" who gets trapped by the plot into some pretty ridiculous body language. Marc Harpin does anything but curb the enthusiasm of wholesome young spy James, whose favorite expression is "Shazam!" And newcomer Allison Clear is amusingly matter-of-fact as McCarthy’s prim tart of a daughter, her vowels as flat as the Kansas in August popularized by the Red Herring house composers.

Music of a different sort plays a part in Quartet (at Merrimack Repertory Theatre through March 12). Much is made of the graying of the theater audience, but apart from the 1978 Pulitzer-winning The Gin Game, that demographic seldom shows up on stage. Well, it’s back to the retirement home in this sentimental comedy by Brit dramatist Ronald Harwood — though the stakes are Rigoletto rather than rummy. Set in an English country home reserved for retired musicians, the play (which is in its second American production, following a 2002 staging at Berkshire Theatre Festival) focuses on a foursome of septuagenarian opera virtuosi treading past glories and resentments as they struggle to come to terms with the dying of the light. As the home gears up for a performance celebrating Verdi’s birthday, the four bicker and reconcile, moving from pretension to acceptance as they gear up for a reapproximation of the act-three quartet from their famed recording of Rigoletto, which has been reissued on CD.

The 70-year-old Harwood is known for The Dresser (based on his own experiences with Sir Donald Wolfit) and the Oscar-winning screenplay of The Pianist. Quartet is music of lighter sort: old-fashioned and rather sweet, though too full of repetitive oldsters’ sex-fantasy and dementia jokes. At Merrimack Rep, however, under Gavin Cameron-Webb’s direction, it’s well turned out on a music-room/terrace set by Bill Clarke that makes you want to practice, practice, practice — less to get to Carnegie Hall than to pasture here. Why none of the other residents ever turns up in this pleasant space is very feebly explained, but the four faded larynxes who’ve claimed it are likably played at MRT by a comically and wistfully adept, if insufficiently decrepit, group. Roger Forbes is lively old baritone Wilfred Bond, whose primary occupation is talking dirty to Jill Tanner’s Cecily Robson, who’s well on her way from alto to Alzheimer’s, while she’s locked to her earphones. Maeve McGuire makes a thorny one-time diva as hobbled Jean Horton, the Gilda of the group. Best of all is Philip Pleasants as repressed and dapper Reginald Paget, who abruptly interrupts reveries to Art to scream obscenities at an off-stage nurse who has deprived him of marmalade. The fact that no Noël Coward is listed on the actor’s résumé only shows that casting agents are not necessarily matchmakers.