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Dinner mystery has
timely political spin
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A political debate in a local restaurant goes terribly awry when one candidate is murdered, and the audience is pressed into service to help identify the killer.
No you don't have to change your November voting plans. The scenario above isn't real, but another edition of Dave & Buster's Mystery Dinner Theatre, "A Vote for Murder," with a timely political spin to it.
In the production, incumbent Sen. J.T. McKay is a stereotypical "old boy" who never met a campaign contribution he didn't like, and who speaks with the pompous hypocrisy of a veteran politician. McKay is being challenged by a quirky but apparently squeaky-clean woman from the other major party, and by an oddball reform-minded environmentalist who is a perennial also-ran.
Other election year characters include a smarmy lobbyist, an ambitious journalist and a ditsy young woman who has just appointed herself the oddball's campaign manager.
Several of these people have secrets they want to keep hidden. One of them sees murder as the appropriate solution to problems caused by a would-be blackmailer or whistle-blower.
The script is a basic boilerplate mystery courtesy of the D&B headquarters, but local director Andrew Meader and his cast have been allowed to plug in references to local places and personalities. So, in addition to standard one-size-fits-all bits about illicit affairs, female urologists and a disdainful description of someone who "makes Dick Cheney look cuddly," there are also customized references to the (fictitious) Makawao fern bat, Joe Moore, Linda Lingle and this newspaper.
Bill Ogilvie personifies bluster and pompousness as McKay; Lisa Konove succeeds in making McKay's stuffy rival also equally off-putting; and Bob Jones (not the MidWeek columnist) gradually takes center stage as the blundering high-minded "independent" who threatens to expose his opponents' secrets.
William Boynton works a couple of comic mannerisms into his performance as the unctuous lobbyist, and Julia Ogilvie, Bill Ogilvie's real-life daughter, displays a fine touch for comedy as the seemingly naive woman who decides on a whim that being a campaign manager is more fun than dry cleaning.
Cassandra Wormser is the ambitious journalist. Troy Apostle completes the cast as no-nonsense security specialist Lansing Hughes.
"A Vote for Murder" becomes interactive theater when Hughes invites the audience to help find the killer, and the cast members make their way from table to table for one-on-one questioning. The rules are simple. The characters are not allowed to lie, and they are required to answer any question except any variation of the following two: "Are you the murderer?" and "Is someone else the murderer?"
Each table works as a team, and each member of the winning team -- drawn from teams who have correctly ID'd the killer and come up with a reasonably plausible motive -- receives a $5 Dave & Buster's Power Card as a reward for helping to bring the killer to justice. (Based on the results of a September show, a team of men and women working together will probably do better in sifting through the facts of the case than an all-male or all-female team.)
There are several possible outcomes to the investigation, so mystery fans who successfully catch up with the killer in one show could conceivably uncover a different killer in subsequent performances.
Interactive dinner theater is rare in Honolulu, but those in the mood to participate in a light melodrama will find this dinner show package an enjoyable and reasonably affordable early evening experience.
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