Murder just for fun

By Valerie Singleton Rocky Mountain News

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.

Left Doug Proctor and Megan Heffernan on the cover of the Weekend Spotlight. Right 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

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 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 Juilliard.

Helping people get in touch
Wills-Cuellar says it's not necessarily murder that makes crowds come to 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.”