AUDITION: MUCH ADO ABOUT MURDER

Rich but rotten Carlton Larraby enjoyed punctuating the lives of his family with macabre little surprises. His latest joke is a Halloween party with everybody dressed as a character from Shakespeare. When the play begins, the bored guests have arrived and wait impatiently for their host to show up, unaware that he has been gruesomely bludgeoned to death in his study. Since this is an audience-participation play, the murder is revealed to the audience before the characters of the play know about it. A sinister master of ceremonies named Mr. Hawker tells the audience what has happened in a series of flashbacks as he lets them see the events surrounding the murder. Little by little, as the audience gets to know the people of the drama, they begin suspecting who the murderer might be … only to discover that they’re wrong. To help them further, Mr. Hawker invites them to view the clue-rich scene of the crime during intermission. Finally, near the end of Act II, he gives the audience the opportunity to question the characters. All the ingredients of a deliciously frightening murder mystery are here—lightning, thunder, weird sounds, screams in the dark—plus the fun of letting the audience participate in solving the crime. As a critic pointed out, Much Ado About Murder provides a “whimsically entertaining night.