You don’t have to be a murder mystery fan to enjoy Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot; Or Holmes For The Holidays, but if you are, this Ludwig-meets-Conan Doyle-meets-Agatha Christie farce will prove a particularly tangy holiday treat at Pasadena’s Madeline Gardens, and one served with a high-tea dinner as scrumptious as the show itself.

With as many as three mysterious deaths to investigate and every single suspect given ample motive for murder, audiences will have as much fun trying to figure out who dunnit as they’ll have savoring one colorful character after another, not the least of whom is based on a real-life star of the early 20th-century stage.

 The actor in question is William Gillette (Noah Khyle), whose self-penned play’s concluding scene opens The Game’s Afoot with a literal bang, as Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes finds his curtain call interrupted by an arm-grazing bullet.

Flash forward to Christmas Eve 1926 and the Connecticut mansion where a recovering William and his mother Martha (Meggan Taylor) have invited his costars and a surprise guest over for a holiday fete.

 There’s ingenue Aggie Wheeler (Annabelle Borke) and her boyish beau Simon Bright (Jacob Betts), character actor Felix Geisel (Ryan Klamen) and his redheaded firecracker of a wife Madge (Melissa Harkness), and New York drama critic Daria Chase (Caroline Pitts), whose poison pen has savaged each and every one of them at least once.

Aggie provides the evening’s first big news, announcing that less than a year after having become a honeymoon widow, she has tied the knot with Simon, news that gets even better when the latter learns that his wife has inherited millions.

Aggie’s announcement pales, however, in comparison to Daria’s that stage doorman Noggs has just been murdered, a note found at the scene of the crime suggesting that the killer is most likely one of tonight’s guests.

 When one of the assembled company ends up with a knife in his or her back, there’s no one better to investigate than Miss Marple stand-in Inspector Goring (Tamarah Ashton), assuming she is who she says she is.

 Though farce master Ludwig abandons some of the genre’s conventions (there’s no stageful of doors for characters to slam and hide behind, for example), there’s still enough physical comedy, mistaken identity, and double entendres to delight, and William’s fascination with the latest technology, including a remote-controlled home intercom system, is a nifty comedic addition to the mix.

More importantly, the playwright/mystery aficionado keeps you guessing even after finding out who committed murder.

Borke directs with a deft, effervescent touch, the devilishly handsome Khyle doing terrific double duty as renowned stage star, classic sleuth, or a combination of both.

 Supporting performances sparkle, from Borke’s luminescent Aggie to Betts’s engaging Simon to Klaman’s dynamic Felix to Harkness’s bold-and-brassy Madge to Taylor’s dithery Madge, with special snaps to Ashton’s wackily eccentric Inspector and Pitts’s deliciously viperous Chase, and if not everyone seems sure whether they’re English or American or some combination of both, it’s no biggie.

As in The 413 Project’s previous Madeline Gardens offering, The Importance Of Being Earnest, the Pasadena teahouse’s main salon turns the audience into flies on William’s elegant manor walls (or on its divans as the case may be), with only a few script-dictated pieces of furniture and some ingenious props needed to complete the transformation

 Additional design kudos are shared by Julie Burlington’s elegant period suits and frocks and Borke’s nifty mix of spooky sound effects and music and some 1920s tunes to boot.

Indeed the only drawback of this non-traditional setting is a lighting design that can’t quite provide requite atmosphere, go significantly dark when a murder is committed, or fade completely to black when a just-murdered character appears to rise from the dead for intermission.

 The Game’s Afooot; Or Holmes For The Holidays is produced by Julie Burlington. Kyle DeCamp is stage manager. Beth Ann Borke and Miranda De Meo are technical crew. De Meo and Kyle DeCamp are understudies.

I had such a terrific time at both The Importance Of Being Earnest and The Game’s Afoot (and loved every tasty morsel of the multi-course meals I was served) that I have but one question for Sherlock. When will The 413 Project be back for more?

The 413 Project Theater at The Madeline Gardens, 1030 E Green St, Pasadena.
www.the413project.org

–Steven Stanley
October 31, 2018

Tags: Ken Ludwig, Los Angeles Theater Review, The 413 Project Theater, The Madeline Gardens