Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life!
It’s often been said that in the body of dramatic literature, the dinner theater murder mystery is the rectum. But everyone has to have a rectum, doesn’t he? So, while in Toronto, I consider taking advantage of a theatrical form that I’m never offered in Manhattan. And when I discover that tonight’s offering at Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre is Murder in Casablanca, a parody of one of my all-time favorite movies, they can’t keep me away.
Soon, I’m standing under the modest marquee and surveying the picture by the door: A happy-looking cast is surrounding Joan Rivers, sporting one of her faces from many moons ago. Downstairs, I go to a vast space where six rows of dinner tables stretch to the rafters in front of a curtained stage that, I’ll soon learn, won’t be used. Mysteriously Yours instead has its seven-member cast perform in the aisles. At some tables, one seat is purposely left empty so that various members of the dramatis personae can sit and interact with customers.
Now, I’m someone who went to see Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding eight times in its first six months, so I’m no stranger to interactive theater and I know how to hold up my end of the bargain. Before the show, I’m already asking actors passing by, “Are you Equity?” All pretend not to know of what I speak. Laurence Prance, who plays Captain Renault, seems really surprised when I ask him, “Louis, when you told Ilsa that Rick is ‘the kind of man that, if I were a woman, I should be in love with him,’ what did you really mean?”
Then the show begins.The time is 2005 in Morocco’s most famous city and we’re in Rick’s Café Canadienne, owned by Rick Blaine. He and Renault are joined by Signor Ferrari, a rival nightclub owner; Sam, the pianist; and Mercedes, who loves Rick unrequitedly. (Mercedes? Yvonne is the name of the woman Rick spurns in the classic 1942 film.) I’m surprised there’s no Ugarte, so memorably played by Peter Lorre in the film, but he’ll show up later in the evening as Bugatti after Louis Renault is murdered. Needless to say, both roles are played by Laurence Prance. If you’re going to off someone, you may as well recycle the actor, given that you’re paying him for the whole night.
Rick is asked, “Why not return to Canada? SARS? West Nile Virus? Mad Cow Disease?” (Tourism Toronto would surely have preferred that these problems weren’t mentioned. There are also jokes about hemp, alluding to Toronto’s look-the-other-way marijuana policy.) In flashback, we learn that Rick was aiding virtually hopeless environmentalist causes in Nantucket, a location which gives license to use a very famous limerick. Along the way, Rick fell in love and was jilted by Ilsa (at a bus depot, not a train station) for reasons that he still doesn’t understand — but he will when Ilsa unexpectedly shows up in the café with Victor Volvo, the world’s most famous environmentalist. Victor tries to get him to rejoin the fight but Rick says, “I don’t give a damn about politics. I’m a Canadian.” Still, he doesn’t consider this his actual nationality. When asked, he says — as in the Oscar-winning film — “I’m a drunkard.” Only this time, Victor helpfully adds “from Ottowa,” which rings some local color bells with the crowd.
More than a few lines are lifted directly from the film’s script, including “”I stick my neck out for nobody,” “You despise me, Rick, don’t you?” and “I don’t remember that far back.” Some are altered slightly (“We’ll always have Nantucket.”) while others are quite wittily changed (“You’re not only a sentimentalist, but an environmentalist.”) And, every now and then, a good original line pops up. (“‘Bribe’ is such an ugly word. I prefer ‘sponsorship.’ “)
As actors keep sitting at my table, I ask each of them — except for Rick — “Is it my imagination or has Rick gained an inordinate amount of weight?” As Jean Daigle is indeed a good 30 pounds heavier than Bogart, many of the performers give out with knowing laughs. Rick Kunst, who plays Victor, gallantly shifts focus to himself. “Hey, when we decided to do this show, I was hoping I’d be able to get into this suit,” he says, in the process letting me know that Mysteriously Yours doesn’t necessarily provide costumes for its cast.
Daigle turns out to be a genial guy. He tells me that the cast members, who write the shows with the theater’s co-owner/producer Brian Caws, wanted to do a Casablanca spoof without mentioning World War II or the Nazis. “So we wound up with the environmental cause — not that that’s such a big issue in Canada now,” he concedes. When he sees that I’m a buff of the film, he talks about its recently having placed so many entries on AFI’s list of the 100 Best Movie Quotations.
These performers, unlike the Tony n Tina’s cast, don’t mind breaking character. This becomes very clear after Mercedes humiliates herself by begging Rick to continue seeing her and then sits at my table. I give her a lecture on how she shouldn’t debase herself to a man. “I am in luff,” she explains, in her best Dietrich accent. But I won’t accept that. “You must have more self-respect,” I insist, and the lass airily protests, “You don’t understand luff.” I assure her that I do. “If he doesn’t want you, he’s not worth having. So why do you continue to chase him?” I demand, finally causing Barb Scheffler to lose patience with me, drop her voice an octave, and put an end to the discussion with, “It’s in the script, dahling.”
And so it goes. Sam doesn’t sing “Who’s got trouble?” or “Who’s unhappy?” but, instead, “Who’s got taxes?” and “Who’s got cellulite?” The most audacious moment comes when Rick asks Bugatti, “You blew your source?” and is told, “No, I got the information by paying for it.” As the crowd roars at the naughtiness, I look at Mercedes — who’s at my table just then — and I drone, “It gets a little more tasteless as people get more drunk, doesn’t it?” She doesn’t want to comment on this, but I do think that she’s giving me a single, barely perceptible, ever-so-slow nod.
Then we’re told to solve the crime. We’re given time to fill out cards on which we name the murderer and guess the motive — and to pay our checks. During this interval, Brian Caws tells me that he and the cast make sure that every mystery drops an important clue so that those audience members who are paying rapt attention can indeed solve the crime, and sure enough, it makes complete sense when the murderer is disclosed. (If you don’t believe me, Murder in Casablanca returns August 12 and September 16.)
But I can’t let the evening end without asking about Caws having appropriated some of the film’s dialogue. He shrugs and slightly changes the subject by saying, “We wanted to do a show based on Clue and we got permission from someone at Parker Brothers to use names like Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum. Then, wouldn’t you know, he left the company and we got a cease-and-desist notice. We changed the names to Colonel Dijon and Professor Prune, and we wound up getting laughs where we didn’t originally have them, so it was all for the best.”
The audience had a great time at Murder in Casablanca. I was amazed at how many of them brought cameras and asked to have their pictures taken with the performers. They seemed to believe that they were in the company of theatrical royalty and they had to capture the moment to have and to hold from this day forth. Given the laughter and applause that I heard at Mysteriously Yours, I’m not surprised that so many people call 1-800-NOT-DEAD to make reservations.
********************
[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
