Murder just for fun
By Valerie Singleton © Rocky Mountain News
April 18, 2003
Johnny Bosco was murdered April 11.
He was stabbed, poisoned, electrocuted and suffered heart failure, according to the autopsy report. There are at least five suspects
that evening. More than 100 potential witnesses watched the victim stagger through the ballroom.
They gasped. They shrieked. They danced the conga.
In the world of murder mystery theater, death is a laughing
matter. One minute Johnny Bosco is clutching his chest, making a mockery
of a dramatic death sequence. The next, an elderly sleuth in the audience
is dancing the hula and getting frisky with Susan Snu, Bosco's co-worker
and the most highly suspected person in the room.
Mystery is a friendly diversion
Staged at hotels, inns, restaurants and conference centers
across the state, the murder mysteries are designed to provide an intimate
setting for friends, a more engaging meeting for business colleagues and,
on rare occasions, stress relief for the employee eager to see their boss in
a compromising position.
Many of the murder mystery outfits in Colorado have been
around for almost a decade, and as the years have passed they've grown
in popularity. There's nothing new about dinner theater or the improv comedy
that fuels the shows. But each season there's a growing interest in answering
that one question: whodunit? "It took 20 years to become an overnight
success," says Marne Wills-Cuellar, founder of Marne Interactive Productions.
The company, which specializes in improv comedy and murder mysteries, has
hosted private events for 14 years and public shows for seven. "Sometimes
things take a while. It takes a while for everybody to go, 'Oh wow!' "
While Marne's husband, Carlos Cuellar, oversees the business side of their shows, she writes the
scripts and relies on more than 20 actors to bring them to life at Adams
Mystery Playhouse. The bulk of the shows feature the cast interacting with the audience spontaneously, whether mingling
with them as they enter or getting everyone out of their seats and into a conga line.
“What we're trying to do here is celebrate the creativity of everybody - including the audience
members,” Wills-Cuellar says.
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Above—Doug Proctor and Megan Heffernan on the cover of the Weekend
Spotlight.
Below—Megan Hefferman, left, Marne Wills-Cuellar and Doug Proctor take part in
Death for Dinner, a mystery dinner play by Marne Productions. Mystery dinner
theater is more popular than ever, as the audience gets the chance to escape
the television and the everyday grind to help figure out — and even take part
in — a classic whodunit.
Photos by Dennis Schroeder © Rocky Mountain News
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Inhibitions left at the door
For those hungry for the spotlight - and there's plenty of them - dinner theater
is the place to be. The lady at table No. 9 Inn says it's
her birthday, and she's celebrating by injecting herself in the story. She
claims to be the victim's betrayed lover, and in a fit of rage she's ripped up
half of the clues, necessary components in solving the case.
There's competition for stardom at nearly every table. Two women at table No. 3
yell at the actors. “You're the murderer!” At the same table, a woman wearing a
tiara claims to have been engaged to the deceased and is seeking retribution..
"We have no idea what's going to happen," says David
Hardison, aka Cliff Worthington in Death For Dinner. "We're
trying to get an idea of who the people are and involve and
bring them into the show. I'd never seen anybody tear up
clues like that."
"You have people who are really sheets to the wind," says
Mark Corrigan, an improv actor who plays a maintenance man
in Death For Dinner. "Sometimes if you have somebody who's
really obnoxious it's not easy."
Murder truly an art
"Wills-Cuellar
says. "My kids think it's hilarious. I spend most of my time
trying to think of ways to kill people. But it is kind of
fun to figure out what motivates people and, for me, I like
to study people."
She bases most
of her characters on people she's known or experiences she
has had. The script is meant to be a guideline, and the
actors are encouraged to be creative.
In Marne
Interactive's Death For Dinner, Corrigan transforms into C.J.
Hamer, a seemingly simple-minded maintenance man. His
constant companions are a yellow toolbox and a nervous
stutter.
"He's the guy
who lives next door that's just the nicest guy in the world
that you can't imagine would do this," says Wills-Cuellar.
But looks can
be deceiving. For laughs, Corrigan pulls off brilliant
impressions of Bill Clinton, The Godfather and Sam Kinison.
He unveils Hamer's maniacal side when he introduces the
audience to his best friend, a knockoff Howdy Doody puppet.
Among the many items implicating each character - a fork, a
prescription of heart pills replaced with Tic-tacs, a blue
glass of water - is one of Hamer's electric tools.
"We all have
to just think on our feet," Corrigan says. "Every character
writes their own show."
Some of the
best improvisation happens behind the scenes. When one of
the actresses forgot her script in the bathroom and
discovered it was floating around the audience, the group
quickly adjusted their characters and picked a new murderer.
And when the
lock on the bathroom door broke, it was C.J. Hamer, the
fictional maintenance man, who came to the rescue by
climbing through a window from outside the hotel. They can't
teach you that at Julliard.
Helping people get in touch
Wills-Cuellar says it's not necessarily murder that makes crowds come to the
Adams Mystery Playhouse where mysteries unfold.
In a society more in touch with Homer Simpson than their next-door neighbors,
murder mystery theater is taking people away from their TV and computer monitors
and putting them back in touch with real people.
“People want to be able to participate in something,” Wills-Cuellar says. “I
feel like we see that with the interactive video games, interactive things on
the computer and renaissance festivals: the humanness of getting back to not
being quite so isolated - rubbing elbows with folks.”
