I’m not sure why but in the last few years mysteries have gotten increasingly popular both on stage and on the big screen. While there are certainly some good ones I must admit it is not my favorite genre. I often find the cases to be obvious and the clue-solving of the detective to be poorly done. However, if I am going to enjoy a mystery I’m more likely to like it if it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is funny. The more a production can camp it up with the mystery the more likely it is going to appeal to me. Fortunately the new production of Murdered to Death at The Empress Theatre delivers on the laughs making it a fun night of community theatre everyone will enjoy.

One of the things that drives me crazy, particularly about Agatha Christie mysteries, is when the author hasn’t built up the clues well so the detective ends up with a long exposition dump in the final scenes explaining how he or she knows the bad guy committed the crime. It’s just not very satisfying and makes the earlier scenes collecting clues quite tedious and hard to get through.

What I liked about Murdered to Death is they make fun of that very thing. It’s funny when the Inspector Pratt drones on about who might have committed the crime and then someone will point out why that couldn’t be the case and he immediately backtracks. Of course, this is what Christie’s detectives would be doing in the regular mysteries, but we are supposed to accept it in her stories because they are the brilliant detectives on the case.

The production at The Empress is all about the acting with everything else kept rather simple. Everything is directed by Steph Johnson and she has gotten the best performance out of her actors as they could possibly give. They even all have the appropriate accents for the characters whether British or French.

My favorite dynamic of the play is the Jeeves and Wooster-like relationship between Constable Thompkins played by Jiji Dillon and the inane Inspector Pratt played by Paul Gibbs. At one point Pratt even shoots Thompkins in the leg and then she has to walk around with a hurt leg for the rest of the scenes and Dillon shows the frustration of working on this case with this foolish man well. Both Gibbs and Dillon are very funny together.

There are times when the narrative of Murdered to Death feels a little long and I start to get restless but a lot of that comes down to personal taste and my affinity for mysteries (it also takes forever to actually get to the murder or death mentioned in the title.) I still had a really good time with it and it’s nice to see something new in such a charming little theater. I often say I wish more theaters did straight plays instead of musicals. There are so many less moving pieces so they are more likely to master the material and that’s what they’ve done here at The Empress. It’s what we all want from a night of community theatre and it’s playing until Nov 15th. Tickets can be purchased here.

Murdered to Death is written by Peter Gorden and was first performed in 1993. It was written to be a spoof of Agatha Christie. Gordon actually wrote a trilogy of murder mystery spoofs centered around the Inspector Pratt who we are introduced to in this play.

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