Adorned with a full hoop skirt, oversized hat and scowl, Maybelle Cross was the embodiment of a sassy Southern belle as she stomped though the Chez Bayou restaurant in Grand Rapids. The young and bright-eyed Edna Jean Carlysle, meanwhile, fluttered from table to table, offering her hand and smile as she introduced herself to patrons as the night’s vocal entertainment.
In a far corner, Big Daddy LaBeau donned a sharp suit and smelled of affluence. He yielded a large diamond-headed walking cane and began to confidently strut among diners. The nightclub magnate was the reason Edna Jean was singing at the club. This was her live audition.
The audience mingled with other Southern belles and cabaret singers until Edna Jean took the stage for her big moment. The crowd hushed as she spritzed her vocal chords with breath spray. The pretty starlet cleared her throat, coughed, choked, coughed again, and collapsed on the floor to her untimely death.
So begins the show in the latest murder mystery production from The Red Hand Company, which has for the past year been staging deaths and deductions at hotspots across West Michigan. Each performance is customized to the venue. The Chez Bayou show, naturally, was a tale of southern intrigue, "For Whom the Belle Tolls: A Deep South Murder."
Dinner and a death
Dinner theater is a distinctly American attraction. It is commonly traced to a central Virginia tavern at the midpoint of the last century, where six actors, two children, a dog, and two pigs (all recently relocated from New York), took residence in the historic Hanover Tavern and re-opened it as Barksdale Theatre, the first playhouse in the region. Taking advantage of the existing kitchen and the community’s expectations for dinner as part of a night out, the theater soon began marketing itself as a hybrid restaurant/playhouse, a model that would within a decade be replicated nationwide.
During the 1980s, a handful of venues began borrowing subject matter from the murder mystery party games that emerged in response to a string of popular detective movies and television programs, plus the board game “Clue.” The Cantab Lounge in Massachusetts is credited as the first fulltime murder mystery dinner theater, opening in 1986.
While there are no dedicated dinner theaters in West Michigan today, a number of venues have turned to local actors to help provide an alternative to blasé chain-restaurant dinners and big-screen movies. Torrence O’Haire launched The Red Hand Company as a linguistics student at Grand Valley State University, initially as a “dare to his own directing abilities.” As a spectator in murder-mystery dinner-theater performances in Toronto and Chicago, he had spent the majority of those shows wondering how he could make the productions better.
“I have a control-freak mentality,” he says. “Murder mysteries have always been a favorite of mine, and since then every show is a challenge to myself.”
O’Haire assembled a cast of former Grand Valley classmates, theater instructors, and other local actors for his first show at Italian restaurant Tre Cugini in downtown Grand Rapids, “Fashionably Late,” which dealt with scandal and murder along a fashion show runway. Other shows have been written for Bar Divani, Naya, Cinnabar, the JW Marriott hotel, and most recentlyChez Bayou — all a far cry from the venues historically associated with murder-mystery theater. The troupe is taking traditional murder-mystery dinner theater and giving it an edgier, big city feel. “The space lends itself to art,” explains O’Haire
Local-theater patron Molly Frendo attended the performance at Chez Bayou and was impressed with both the venue and the performance “I hadn’t attended murder mystery dinner theater before and wasn’t sure what to expect,” she said as she scribbled notes on an index card about Miss Kitty Stevens (played by student Adrienne Menchaca), glamorous assistant to Big Daddy LaBeau, who had peculiarly handed Edna Jean the death-delivering breath spray just moments before her collapse.
Frendo, posing questions to Big Daddy about the diamond on his cane, learned there was another jewel at stake that night, as well as an envious competitor of the now-dead Edna Jean (Catherine Guarino, a GVSU alum and today director of communications for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra) in the restaurant. Using these and other tidbits of information, gathered from interactions and eavesdropping on other diners’ conversations, the theater-goers gradually pieced together the crime scene.
The experience depends less on O’Haire’s plot and choreography than the interaction between the actors and audience. During the performance, he pays careful attention to the audience’s level of understanding, occasionally feeding the actors instructions or additional clues to promote involvement and interaction.
“Ninety-percent of the story is with the audience,” he says.
"It wasn't me with the candlestick in the library"
As the four-course meal progressed, tablemates shared details of their interviews with the cast and the questions became increasingly more specific. Ears perked when alligator wrestler Remy Augustin (Chris Teller, another GVSU alum, currently seeking his teaching certification) responded to inquiries surrounding his strange lisp and upcoming wedding. Wandering among diners and chatting with strangers in his role as Big Daddy, Brent Alles agrees it’s the interaction with the audience that keeps the shows exciting.
“You have to step outside yourself a little,” he laughs. “It’s definitely different from on stage. You’re right in the thick of things.”
A young professional working in the medical staffing industry and also teaching as an adjunct professor at Davenport University and Grand Rapids Community College, Alles' past theater work includes shows with the Thebes Players, Circle Theatre, and Master Arts Theatre. This is his fourth show with The Red Hand Company.
“It’s a tricky form of acting,” says O’Haire. “It’s really controlled improv with scripts that are little more than a character bio. Quick wit is incredibly important. There is a level of intellect and intelligence to realize what needs to happen instantly.”
Given a basic list of 100 things to know about their characters, actors study their parts and work together as a group to capture the nuances of each role. From an alligator wrestler with a lisp, to a psychic spinning curses on diamonds and an uptight stage manager, diners soon become entangled with the show’s plot as they dig at the cast for minute details that could help them crack the case.
“The basic appeal is that it’s completely unique and there is something for everyone to enjoy,” says Todd Lewis of Ransom Note Entertainment, one of a handful of other improvisational theater groups in the region that perform murder mystery drama. His firm specializes in private parties and will customize the mystery to the group or business in attendance, incorporating the personal background and corporate details of the guests and/or sponsor into the plot.
Another firm specializing in private parties, GR Improv, is working with Brann’s restaurants to stage a forthcoming series of public “murder for hire” shows. Scott Cramton, owner and director, had the rare opportunity to eradicate Mayor George Heartwell in a performance at this past summer’s Festival of the Arts in Grand Rapids. The show was unfortunately canceled 15 minutes in due to inclement weather and the mayor’s murder was never solved. “We posed the mystery but never solved it,” Cramton laments.
Frendo, the first-time sleuth, eventually won The Red Hand Company’s prize for Worst Sleuth at Chez Bayou after incorrectly pinning the murder of Edna Jean on an innocent member of the troupe. Still, Frendo says she’s interested in attending dinner theater again and will remember it as an exceptional night of entertainment and fine dining. “But maybe next time I’ll bring along my Nancy Drew notepad,” she chides.
Sarah Kommer, a graduate of Aquinas College, lives and works in Grand Rapids. Her last story for Rapid Growth examined the ongoing promotional efforts of Local First.
All Photographs courtesy of The Red Hand Company