WHAT: The Mystery of the Murder at the Murder Mystery - or - Tantrum at the Opera
WHERE: Rochester Opera House
BLURB: Pure Silliness
HIGH POINT: The Cast!
It's Back!! And everything is as expected - ridiculous, over the top, juvenile, locker room humor - and the crowd goes WILD!!
Such is the nature of Rochester's homegrown Murder Mystery series; this year The Mystery of the Murder at the Murder Mystery - or - Tantrum at the Opera (MMMM), which runs a whopping 3.5 hours.
This is not traditional theater, which gives the event a lot of leeway and - per usual - this company makes use of that.
MMMM, written by Anthony Ejarque, is barely scripted. There's lots of improv, silly tunes, some fancy footwork and importantly a collection of very talented people getting together to have a ball - the latter being both its strongest interest and its saving grace.
First a bit of history - most important to the longtime fans: For more than twenty years Rochester's annual murder mystery was produced by the Governor's Inn as dinner theater. This year it switched location to the Rochester Opera House, and is strictly theater with a snack, NOT dinner; a couple of pre-packaged treats, a small pudding, and a few Jello-shots.
Now the show.
MMMM's premise is pretty funny. The Lilac City Angels (a rather dimwitted motorcycle club) band together to recover some loaned money, and along the way are talked into taking part in a ridiculous theater production.
Meanwhile two amoral characters (one the loanee) are running for mayor, while ticking off a whole lot of people along the way - family, friends, mates, and of course the Angels. The owners of the local theater company aren't pleasing too many people either. There's a lot of disgruntled people in town.
The cast is killer. It features some of the finest actors and better voices on the seacoast. Hard to pick out standouts, but certainly Kevin Mahaney, Chelsea Hermann and Amanda Dane - all with outstanding voices - should be mentioned.
Equally delightful are Scott H Severance (in his many hilarious roles), Samuel Bennet, Chris Bradley, Todd Fernald, Heather Conti-Clark, Anthony Ejarque, Benjamin Hanley, and Nick Kanelos Jr. Can't fault this crew.
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