Lights, camera, action!

Try to picture this: You’ve just settled down in a theater seat and are prepared to solve the latest audience participation murder mystery.

The Narrator comes on and gives you a few ins and outs’ of what to look for in the upcoming play.

Then the show starts and you meet Fat Daddy, a rich but vindictive Southern Gentleman with an equally conniving and scheming family.

So you KNOW who’s going to die, right? But who will the murderer be? Is it Sweet Mama, his pandering wife? Or Hyacinth, the daughter who's always cleaning the family firearms? Or maybe Earl the worm or his overly amorous wife, Savannah?

Then comes the scene when Fat Daddy is murdered and he is discovered, dead as a hammer.

Except it isn't Fat Daddy they find but the Narrator! Suddenly, the director enters and the police arrive.

Now you have to figure out which one of the actors murdered the Narrator!

What is real and what isn't? And not only are you questioning the suspects but THEY are questioning YOU! That's right, YOU are a suspect as well! Is the murderer onstage or sitting next to you. Or maybe you really ARE the murderer after all.

This frantic mystery comedy had the audience at the Clover School District Auditorium guessing until the last clue was dropped and the last ham overacts.

Complete with a question and answer period and evidence desk, the spoof was the ultimate for armchair detectives.

The Clover High School drama performed their first play of the 2004-2005 school year.

The play was a murder mystery, meaning the crowd was interactive with the play itself.

The play starts off with Harnell Chesterton (William Jones) narrating a word of warning, “Before we begin, just a word of warning. You see, tonight you will be tricked ... Watch EVERYTHING! Listen to EVERYTHING! Don’t assume. Don’t take anything for granted. You don’t want to miss... a thing.” Where he shows us what he means by “not all is as it seems”.

Then a very frustrated Blanche Latoure (Jessica Henson) hurries out to fuss at our young narrator for not doing as he is suppose to.

And as Miss Latoure exits stage left she yet again has to get Chesterton back on track and saying his right lines. The first few minutes of the play you can see during the example that Lois Jacobsen is a female. And that the weapon she supposedly kills a man with is a comb (or mario action figure, which ever) is infact not a devise capable of killing someone, it is still surprisingly funny and entertaining.



n Black outs: an extinguishing of stage lights to end a scene.

Well in this play black outs played a little more of a role then just a transition from one scene to the next.

Black outs were the cause of many funny incidents with Officer Bainbridge (Batman, I mean Kevin Reel) and his interaction with the rest of the cast.

The play itself is about the murder of Harnell Chesterton, the narrator of the play, who is murdered and placed on stage where Arnold Turnbull is suppose to be.

The play from that point on to the end is trying to find out whom is the killer of Mr. Chesterton. Is it one of the other cast members, director, stage manger, or someone in the audience.



n CAREFULLY: The last words of Harnell says moments before he dies. Or so Miss Blanche Latoure thought she heard Harnell say. But we’ll get that later to quote Officer Bainridge, which throughout his investigation is said many many times.

Now getting back to the Black outs and how they affected the course of the play, its flow if you will. The black outs allowed for many humorous antics involving Officer Bainridge doing his best to find different members of the cast as they keep coming and going in the dark.

Through questioning of what each person’s relationship with the murdered, we find out about each character, which is a rather clever way to introduce and explain each person’s past. We find out that Arnold Turnbull (D.J. Suddreth) and Doris Turnbull (Keyssa Irizarry) are a divorced couple, and that both Doris Turnbull and Leigh Dorsett (Amelia Thompson) had dated Harnnell. Then we discover that the lights manager, sound manger, stage hand Trudy Marsh (Steffie Reaves) was at one time Harnnell’s step daughter, and that she thought up 16 ways to kill him, but never one with a gun, to easy to trace.