Tom Sasvari
The Recorder
M’CHIGEENG—If it was laughter you wanted, with a great meal on top of it, the Manitoulin Secondary School dinner-theatre production of ‘Café Murder’ certainly fit the bill.
Café Murder was an absolutely hilarious murder mystery put on by the MSS musical theatre class last Friday and Saturday evenings in the school cafeteria.
The acting was incredible!
The role of Rosemary—a loud, annoying hypochondriac who is convinced she is allergic to water—was played by MSS teacher Jill Ferguson. She is celebrating her birthday at a fancy restaurant with her four kooky sisters: Melanie, a hippie (played by Allison Orford), Valerie, (a valley girl played by Casey Boisvert), Volleny, a trucker (played by Angela Johnston) and banker Marjorie (played by Dione Runnalls).
Rosemary makes enemies with everyone around her. When she disappears and is presumed murdered, the only objective witnesses in the restaurant are the audience members, who must cast their vote. Was it one of Rosemary’s sisters? The self-taught Detective Harris (played by Andrew Vokes), the passionate French chef, played by Tom Scott, the polite and proper maitre’d (played by Mike Zegil), or maybe the sarcastic waiter (played by Warren Corbiere).
The MSS cafeteria has never looked as good as it did this past weekend, with beautiful tables settings and tablecloths. Yana Bauer was the hostess, with Mr. Zegil playing the role of the maitre’d, who escorted all audience-dinner guests to their table.
The band included Ethan Theijsmeijer, Larissa Chevrette, Natalia Bell and Lily Hore.
The maitre’d told everyone in the restaurant, “you have nothing to fear at Café Murder!” (meanwhile a loud scream from a female voice is heard in the background).
Rosemary never stops talking or complaining about the food telling the waiter for example, “it is my birthday. I’m allergic to water. Even a bit of water used in the meal would mean I could die!”
“What a shame,” retorts the maitre’d.
It is after much ‘discussion’ that Rosemary disappears to the restroom, where she is presumably murdered.
Detective Harris arrives on the scene, declaring Rosemary, “was murdered here in Café Murder” (and he reveals a dress that she had been wearing when she went to the restroom-that is now soaked in water), “done away with a few splashes of water.”
Detective Harris by the way reveals to everyone he has just graduated as a private investigator, along with computer programming and neurosurgery, all done through an online course with ‘SmartyPants Career College.” From there it just gets more hilarious.
Witnesses in the restaurant, the audience members, get to ask questions of each of the cast of actors and get to select who they think is the murderer, and why. In the end, four of the 16 tables filled for the production are recognized as having got the identity of the murderer? Or was there actually a murder…
Anyway, the waiter admits he did it, noting that “she got what she deserved.” He explained that Rosemary was a regular at a restaurant he used to work at and aggravated her there as well. He had just joined the crew at Café Murder recently and said “I saw an opportunity for revenge,” having splashed water on Rosemary (who remember is supposed to be allergic to water).
However, it is at this time Rosemary walks back in to sit at the head table to eat. “I found out I don’t have a water allergy at all,” she tells the crowd, which is either laughing hysterically or in shock. She then proceeds to go back to complaining, this time that her dinner is cold.
The scrumptious dinner served to the audience featured caesar salad, buns, lasagna (both meat or vegetarian from the Caruso Club), chocolate tarts from Ultimately Chocolate, along with beverages, coffee, tea and juice. The meal was served by several MSS musical theatre students.
Café Murder drew a crowd of 62 audience members on Friday evening and another 64 on Saturday. All proceeds funds from the murder mystery dinner theatre goes towards MSS musical production ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ which will hit the MSS stage on February 13,14, 15, 2020.
It was another fantastic production and evening of theatre and great food, served up by MSS. And to think the cast only had three rehearsals before bringing this production to the stage. Amazing!
