Mystery at Upton House – Monticello Opera House – In Review

♦ June 4, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

The play Mystery at Upton House, by Robert J. LeBlanc, is not a traditional one. There’s a stage, and there are actors, and there are scenes for which the actors walk onto the stage and perform, but there’s just as much of not that then there is of that. The play is built around dinner and interactivity from the audience, one of several interactive plays from Sleuths Mystery Entertainment. It’s a half play, half dinner party, this time catered by Porch on the Green and performed at the Monticello Opera House on their lower floor. It’s a light mystery that focused less on plot and character development and more on inviting audience interaction, and it all begins with the appetizer.

Like an actual restaurant there’s a short time before you get your appetizer. First, you had to find your table, adjust to your new surroundings, see who your neighbors are. This led to one of the two technical issues the play had: there wasn’t much space in between the tables themselves. When fully seated there was often no space to move around, which meant that if you wanted to visit the bar, or the bathroom, you had to plan your route based on who you could actually squeeze past.

I was seated over at table 16, way in the back, one of several tables equally far from the stage itself. There were seats for eight people and all of them were filled, and prior to sitting down at the table I didn’t know six of these people. Introductions were made, but not too in depth: this was a shared space for the next few hours, no need to worry about anything more than that.

There were no menus, but instead Playbills and Sleuth Mystery Sheets and mini-golf pencils. Half the sheet was instructions on what to do during the play (analyze clues! ask questions! solve murder! punish the murderer!), and the other half had space to fill out notes, put your name, who you think did it and what they deserved for doing it. My guess on who did it was incorrect, but I can assure you my punishment (the killer would have to write a 60,000 word dissertation on the deeper themes of the film Morbius with Jared Leto) would have been most severe.

The First Course – Cuts of bread with butter, served on a platter for the table

The bread was fine, arriving on a single plate delivered to the table as a whole. There were a variety of cuts which to someone with an eye for bread would be able to tell you what kind of breads were involved, what their ingredients were, what really separated one bread from another. I am not that person. I picked up a bread and a butter, I buttered up the bread, and I ate the buttered-up bread.

When it comes to classic restaurant staples, bread and butter is probably the top of the list for what I would expect to get served at the beginning of a meal. Sometimes it’s a very specific bread known at the establishment (see breadsticks at Olive Garden), while other times it could very easily be just a random assortment of bread-like materials (I have fond memories of going to a restaurant called Omega back in Chicago, which served a tray that had cuts of bread, some muffins, and saltine crackers). Regardless of variety, it’s not meant to be a meal in itself, but a taste for what’s to come.

If the classic murder mystery were a meal, the appetizer would be the story that happens from the start up until the murder happens. The characters are introduced, along with their motivations for being there in the first place. You don’t know who’s going to be the murderer, or who’s going to be the victim, but you can tell that there’s a number of people with grievances, not to mention the possibility of a murder weapon being shown (a regular Chekhov’s gun sort of situation).

For Mystery at Upton House the setting was the home of the late Lord Crawley, where his wife was having herself a dinner party to raise money for the war effort against the Nazi regime. There’s the butler, the maid, the son and his fiancé, and lastly the constable. Without giving anything away, I’ll have you know that one of them died, and at least one of them was the killer, and that the play was designed so that the killer, and their motivations and methods, changed for every night.

The audience also technically existed within the universe of the play, and the characters were often speaking directly to the audience. It made the opening introduction almost feel closer to a Saturday Night Live monologue with jokes that happened to set up the plot.

There’s a second technical issue that showed up right from the beginning and sticks with the show until the end, and that was sound. The second floor of the Monticello Opera House has the theater proper, and was designed to carry sound. The first floor was not. If I was at a table set closer to the stage I probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but all the way back against the opposite wall made me spend a good amount of attention just trying to make sure I can hear what the actors are saying.

And yes, lady over there, that coughed throughout the show. I could hear you, especially.

The Second Course – Iceberg salad topped with pears, feta, candied pecans and lemon basil vinaigrette

When it comes to salad, if you’re not concerned about what’s going on beneath the surface, then iceberg lettuce is for you. This salad happened to have two things that I, in particular, love most: feta and vinaigrette. The first I could eat on its own, the second is my choice on any salad. Also, it’s important to note the absence of croutons, which in my case only made the salad better. I do not like croutons on my salad because they are difficult to pick up with a fork. As a part of a meal, I’ve always considered it to be a part of the entrée. Not the entrée itself, but also not the appetizer either. It’s the direct lead into the main event.

For a mystery, that is the understanding of who the suspects are, and their possible motives to kill. The more suspects, the more believable the motivations, the more intriguing the mystery inherently becomes. In the case of Mystery at Upton House, that meant the introduction of a final character, the driver Charlee Weeks, that attempted to solve the case. It’s here that the play diverted from more expected storytelling to something that better suited the format of the interactive dinner party.

Charlee moved from one character to the next, summarizing what their motivations are, as well as their suspicious behavior. This was especially important for the audience’s sake, because it’s that interaction that was required for the play to be a success. If the audience wasn’t invested in the mystery, then they wouldn’t notice that the characters and the story don’t really develop past this point. Characters don’t really interact with each other from the second scene onwards, with the focus being on Charlee and her interviews/interrogations.

On the surface the actors seem like they played stereotypes of classic mystery conventions, but there’s also an equal helping of improv with the actors walking around during meal courses to answer questions in character. Martha Winters was excellent as Lady Crawley, the Countess accustomed to her title, eager to entertain but also on edge. Tim Nettles played the stiff butler Mr. Rowley, proud when he needed to be, defensive when I accused him of murder. Michael Herrin’s bumbling Edgar was a table favorite, even when he was laughing at his character’s own jokes.

The Third Course – Mrs. Baxter’s chicken marsala over white rice

Did I mention that I don’t know much about bread types? Well, as it turns out, I also don’t know much about marsala types. I’m aware of chicken and white rice, but had to google what a marsala is (which only led to more questions such as: what is a marsala wine? What is a fortified wine?). More google searches only led me to information that probably wasn’t even relevant to the meal, let alone the performance. Either way, it was alright, but I’m relatively easy. You throw some meat and sauce on top of rice and I’m going to be happy enough.

If I was to imagine what would have happened in a traditional mystery during its entrée, I would imagine it would be the part of the story where complications happen. Maybe someone else dies. Bigger clues are revealed as to who actually did it.

The scene that follows the salad felt more like the entrée, and the scene that followed the entrée felt more like the salad in that very little is added. Charlee moved from one character to the next asking everyone one follow-up question, and then the scene is done.

The Fourth Course – Apple pie blossoms with caramel and whipped cream

It’s here at the end of the story that both the audience and the killer(s) received their just desserts. For the audience, it was apple pie, and it was delicious. For the killer(s)? It was the requirement to sing happy birthday to a member of the audience. Oh, they were also arrested and taken off stage, that too.

Was I a great detective? Not particularly. I got the suspect wrong, but the method right (though there was a 50/50 shot for that). I don’t know how well all of the bits and pieces added up, though. As a mystery there’s more red herrings than in a red herring natural habitat, but as an interactive mystery I don’t necessarily think that’s the point. It’s not about being right or wrong, but having a good time doing it.

It was a fun play on its own right, though I would imagine that the amount of fun is highly dependent on who you’re sitting with. I feel like the people at my table had some interesting discussions as to who might have done it, and that level of investment was necessary to make up for the play’s lack of depth.

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