ActorQuest - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Bway 15

In November, Kristin Huffman made her Broadway debut as Sarah (flute, piccolo and sax) in John Doyle's production of Company.  The actress continues her collection of stories about a 15-year career that has led her to the door of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

One of the things I did, while awaiting my "big Broadway break" was MURDER MYSTERIES.  Actually, it was a lot of fun and the company I worked for used very professional actors.  Hope you get a laugh out of this one!

If you would like to come to the cabaret that I am performing at ARS NOVA, on May 7th, 8pm, Monday, you can get tickets on smarttix.com under my name. There will be quite a few COMPANY cast members involved as well.  And, as you can imagine, there will be a lot of laughter!

MURDER FOR HIRE

I am ALWAYS the murderer. I don't think I LOOK like a murderer. In fact, in my husband's words I am very "milk toast" looking.   Personally, I think that makes me sound like something you slop hogs with, but I think he means very "white bread" or Midwestern looking. For commercial purposes I am called very 'Proctor and Gamble".   

But this "look" got me hired on in a murder mystery troop presumably because you simply don't expect a mild mannered gal like me to be toting a gun. There is a prize that goes to the audience member who can guess correctly the 'who' and 'why' of the murders so keeping it a secret and misleading the audience is a hallmark of our shows.  To say that these gigs helped my ad libbing skills is an understatement.  There is a loosely constructed script that outlines what characters we play and the 'scenes' that progress throughout the evening, including the final scene in which I am ALWAYS the murderer. It's a difference audience every time so they don't have a chance to catch on.

Many of the gigs have been on boats, cruising down a river.  The usual form is that after "severed heads" have been found and "body parts" discovered in Victoria Secret bags, the "detective" figures out that it was ME who actually did all these things and was responsible for several people's deaths. The audience has voted on who THEY think is responsible before he comes to his own conclusions and the final moments of the show are when I whip out a gun and spill my whole "explanation" monologue and everyone is surprised that "Julie McCoy" could be the murderer.  Then I shoot off as many blanks as I can at the detective who shoots back at me and I fall to the ground because I guess he is a better shot than I am. I can't remember a gig where anyone has suspected me of being the killer before the conclusion of the show.

Since we often don't know the plot or our parts until we get to a venue, I will probably drop dead myself if I get a script and discover I am NOT the murder.  The first time I did one of them, I had never held any type of gun in my hands. My parents were such pacifists that I was never even allowed to use a squirt gun as a child.  While every other kid was having a great time hiding in the bushes and blasting each other with little streams of harmless water I was forced to make "bombs" of water balloons. So for me, the panic moment in the first murder mystery show was not the looooong final monologue that would clear up my reasons for killing everyone but the actual shooting off of the gun.    Now 50 shows later, I LIKE it.

The best cruise I ever did was sponsored by a millionairess who had hired the whole boat for herself and 25 of her friends to sail up and down the Chesapeake Bay. The cruise was a week long and she had booked entertainment for every night of it.  There were rock bands and lecturers and US.  We did a murder mystery that stretched over two dinners and one lunch. The only problem was that this millionairess was an alcoholic and she missed the first launch. They waited for her...but she never showed up... so they sailed without her. Don't worry...she showed up at the next spot the following day, but she stayed in her room for most of the trip. I pumped the crew for info on her and found that she was getting a divorce and her husband was asking for 10 million in settlement. Also, she had had a hard time actually FINDING 25 friends who wanted to go with her, so she had to ask her children's former baby sitters and her plumber to round out the bunch.  Personally, I have at least 25 friends that I could take on a cruise, and while sitting on the upper deck, I called them all to rub in the fact that I was ON this great cruise. The food was great and when we weren't performing we got to sit on the deck and enjoy the ride. Even after dropping what I thought might be too obvious hints, no one suspected me of being the murderer. That was the best gig.

Here was the worst. We were hired by a family of Italians who owned a chain of restaurants to do a murder mystery on Halloween. The gig was at one of their restaurants in the banquet room. They all came dressed up as stereotypical Italian types, a la the Sopranos.  Big hair, lots of makeup, chewing gum, gold chains, pinstripe suits. I give them credit for having enough of a sense of humor to poke fun at themselves.

Once again I played the innocent hostess who sang songs and greeted them at the door and who would eventually turn out to be the murderer. This is always revealed after the guests have had a chance to review the evidence and vote on the "murderer" at the end of the show. Proving that you have to be on your toes in these shows, one man passed through the door and then doubled back to offer me his card. It said "Have I slept with you before?," and I snapped back "If you had I can guarantee you would have remembered".  I should have taken this macho beginning as the set up for the whole evening. Our boss for these things also plays the "detective", and is the writer of the show. He handles the bulk of the evening and really has a sharp wit. It's very interactive and he gets info on the crowd and writes it into that evening's show.  He informed us LATER, I assume so that we wouldn't back out of the gig, that for this bunch he had a hard time choosing between using the guy who had the porn charges against him or the one who dealt drugs.  He instead used the more innocent info on the women who had shop lifting records and vandalism charges. This group loved to dance and so we played many dance tunes in between our "scenes". There was a fog machine that would come on during some of the numbers and the lights would flicker and change colors.

In my book, the best costume award went to the cross dressing man who walked in with one of the woman.  They were supposed to look like twins. Leopard skin leggings and black top with stuffed bras and blonde wigs teased to heaven.  Their makeup was perfectly done to an inch thickness and they both walked with a bit of a strut.  He actually did that part better. In the circles I run with, that would not be too unusual.  For this family I thought it was a tad odd. All of the other tough guys pretty much ignored this he/she but that didn't seem to bother him.  He primped in the mirror a few times and proceeded to imitate the girl he came with. As I watched him shimmy around I deduced that for this man, Halloween was just a legitimate excuse to wear women's clothes.

When he could pull himself away from one of the mirrors on the wall, he was actually a great dancer.  The fog machine was in high gear and the smoke rose until it was very difficult to see anyone clearly.  I believe the he/she started out dancing with his twin but once the smoke cleared, he could be seen dirty dancing with the guy who had the hit and run record.  This obviously came as a shock to Mr. Hit and Run, who had actually been enjoying the dance. Once he noticed that it was the he/she and not the she/she dancing with him, he proceeded to punch out his dance partner. There weren't a whole lot of men in the room who were going to stand up for he/she because, I suppose in their book, being gay was worse than ripping off a convenient store for kicks.  All five of the actors in the show watched in horror as this poor guy got his perfectly quaffed wig knocked across the room, his lipstick smeared across his face and his elaborate jewelry spilled onto the dance floor. Then I remembered, as the actual murderer in the show, I was packing a gun!

Now I don't want to sound like I knew what I was doing, I just think that if a person is getting his makeup smeared he should get at least a couple of minutes of respite between punches to straighten up in case the press arrives for pictures.  So I walked in front of the entrance...in case this didn't work I wanted to be able to dive out the door...and I let off a few rounds of blanks. Looking back, I think this only worked because in real life these guys were used to things being broken up that way. There was a sudden hush in the room and in that stillness he/she's twin rushed in to pick him up off of the floor.  The assaulter didn't seem to want to hit the REAL woman due to some warped sense of machoism and the fight was stopped.

As I stood there reeling in shock from the fact that this stupid plan had actually worked I realized something. While I had helped save a damsel in distress, I had ruined the ending of the show by giving away the fact that I was the murderer before the final vote!