If the famed mystery author Agatha Christie has taught us anything, it’s that a murder can happen anywhere from a train to a steamship. On Sunday, the performers of “Clued In: Travel Can Be Murder,” an entirely unscripted murder mystery, proved murder can even happen on a zeppelin.
Throughout the month of October, High Stakes Productions takes their year-round show, “Clued In: The Improvised Murder Mystery,” down from The Second City’s fourth floor Donny’s Skybox Theatre to its third floor UP Comedy Club. The Christie-inspired show, normally about an hour long, is expanded to 90 minutes for the Halloween run and hones in on specific themes from Christie’s work.
This year, the Halloween run draws from Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile.” Instead of asking for the audience to suggest a general location — a prompt that kicks off many improv shows — the performers ask for a mode of transportation. At the 4 p.m. show on Sunday, audience members proposed “zeppelin,” a rigid metal airship similar to a blimp.
“I think we all had a vague understanding of what (a zeppelin) was,” “Clued In” cast member Bruce Phillips said. “That’s the beauty of improv, I think — that you are an expert in anything you want to be in as long as you are doing it confidently.”
Phillips, also the executive director and a co-founder of High Stakes Productions, took on the role of the zeppelin’s pilot. But as with the rest of the improvised murder mystery, he didn’t know he’d be playing the character until the show began.
Audience members filled out the room.
So, how does the cast of “Clued In” create a 90-minute whodunit at each of the seven October shows, entirely from scratch, with prompts that can be as obscure as “zeppelin”?
It all comes back to the source material: Christie.
High Stakes Productions Artistic Director Caleb George, who directs the show and performed alongside Phillips on Sunday, said the show revolves around Christie’s genre-defining style.
“You’re gonna see the basic tropes of Agatha Christie, and you’re gonna see what she’s really good at,” George said. “It’s a cozy murder mystery with a parlor summation and a dash of ‘locked room.’”
The specific characters and circumstances vary across shows, but George said Christie’s tropes guide the story’s overall structure: There is the “gathering scene,” in which characters introduce themselves and their relationships to each other; the “interrogation scene,” in which characters reveal secrets to each other away from the others; and the “parlor summation,” in which Christie famously brought the characters together to reveal who the murderer had been all along.
In the show, these acts are separated by the prologue, interlude and epilogue, providing a window into the characters’ minds through monologues while setting up the next sequences.
Over the course of the prologue and gathering scene during Sunday’s show, the improvisers developed a hilariously messy web of relationships between the characters. They all seemed to have known each other prior to boarding the zeppelin. For example, one had previously been employed by another character, and his sister-in-law was that character’s estranged wife.
Engagement Director Rob Grabowski, who is also part of the show’s rotating ensemble, said these entanglements set up the murder suspects — who might have a motive for killing — but they also add dynamism to the show.
“There’s always more affairs to be revealed, secret families, people getting into arguments all the time,” Grabowski said.
To boost the energy, George said the performers can also trigger “flashbacks,” which they signal by ringing bells onstage. One Sunday flashback brought the characters to an office where everyone was inhaling helium, while another jokingly referenced Elizabeth Holmes.
These surreal vignettes often broke from the supposed time frame and genre conventions, adding levity without compromising the plot.
Even with a general structure in mind, the show takes a lot of work to execute. Associate Artistic Producer Grace Goze said the preparation goes beyond just rehearsals.
“We read Agatha Christie novels together,” Goze said. “We watch murder mystery movies together. We talk a lot about how story structure works in the original medium.”
“Clued In” began in 2016 and currently has a rotating 28-person ensemble, many of whom have been in the show or with High Stakes Productions since the show’s inception.
The cast’s large size and the fact that so many have stayed for so long is unique for long-form improv companies, Phillips said. He said their closeness, built up over the years, let them “pull off” and maintain such an elaborate yet entirely unscripted show.
“These are truly, I think, the strongest improvisers you’re going to find,” Phillips said. “We can put any combination of these people together and have a great show.”
With Halloween fast approaching, there are just three shows left of “Travel Can Be Murder.” That means three more mysteries that could take place practically anywhere — even on a zeppelin.
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— In ‘Clued In: An Invitation to Die For,’ even the actors don’t know the culprit
Source: dailynorthwestern.com
