A killer is on the loose, and as romantic tensions and bitter rivalries build, it’s up to the audience to answer one burning question: who killed Harry Snotter?
The theater department put on their third annual murder mystery dinner, “The Hungry Holiday Games,” Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in the black box. The interactive show contained a wacky cast of characters, all based on popular YA book series, working with the audience to figure out who among them committed the heinous crime.
“Doing the murder mystery really brings the fun back to theater,” junior Dahlia Curry, who played Belle Dove, a spoof of Bella Swan from the Twilight series, said. “The Twilight movies are very melodramatic, and also Bella’s acting is really bad; I mess with my hair a lot and really try to lean into the ‘damsel in distress’ aspect while performing, which is really fun for me.”
The show commenced at 7 p.m. after a brief welcome from Ms. Gracie Sanders, making her directing debut as the main overseer of the event.
“I was the technical director for Grease, but I was the director-director for this,” Ms. Sanders said. “This show is about all of my favorite book series growing up, so that was really special for me as well.”
Attendees were treated to a three-course meal prepared by the culinary class. First, servers brought out garden salad with either ranch or house dressing, followed by an entree of “Million Dollar Pasta” (rigatoni with meat sauce) and finally, an eclair pudding trifle for dessert.
“We collaborated with Chef Carlin and the advanced culinary department, which was really cool because it’s not a collaboration that you would really expect to see,” Ms. Sanders said. “Like you would expect the dance department and theater to collab for the musical, but you don’t expect theater and culinary to be doing something together.”
The first half of the show sets up the conditions leading up to Harry Snotter’s murder: Belle’s flighty flirting with both Eddie Sullen and Jake White as well as Ron Cheesely and Harry Snotter, Catnip Paula-Deen’s possession of a bow and arrows and Hermione Manger’s resentment towards Harry for him being top of the class.
“My favorite part of the show was any scene where the spoofs of Edward and Jacob were fighting, it was just so funny,” junior Sydney Unger, who attended the Thursday night performance, said. “Especially when Eddie first appeared, and he was up in the corner posing and covered in glitter. It was overall just hilarious.”
After the lights go out and Harry’s body is discovered, the audience is given 15 minutes to investigate the crime, interviewing the characters and looking through documents and photos that could be used as evidence.
“Character analysis is the best thing to do to prepare for interacting with the crowd, since it’s hard to practice that in rehearsals,” Curry said. “It’s all about knowing what your character does and being able to think of things to say on the fly, which is something that luckily comes pretty naturally to me.”
After all attendees cast their predictions on who the killer is, the performance resumes, and Mercy Jakeson (Percy Jackson) reveals the murderer to be none other than Belle Dove, a girl so fed up with being fought over and manipulated by guys that she was driven to kill her latest suitor. Belle is taken away, and the actors take their final bow to the applause of the audience.
“I think that because we did Grease this year there were a lot of similarities between the musical and the murder mystery, since both were super campy,” Curry said. “With our UIL play in the spring, we usually do something very serious and tear-jerking, so it’s always nice to do stuff that’s more lighthearted and less intense.”
