Fancy, five course dinners planned around a Murder Mystery game where twenty of us play a character and twenty other residents dine and watch the action from the sidelines has become a tradition here at my continuum care complex. Last week was our third murder mystery dinner and once again I took a part. I actually signed up for the audience but the Life Enrichment Director asked me if I'd switch. There was a method to my madness, so to speak, because I knew she wouldn’t get enough actors to sign up and like last year, she’d ask me to switch from an audience member to a player. I said, "yes IF I can pick the part I want to play" and both this year and last year she let me. Some of the parts require fancy costumes—cocktail dresses, tailored suits—stuff I don’t own and don’t have the money to buy for a one-time event. Last year a guy even rented an outfit for $50! A lot of borrowing of props to round out our costumes goes on the week before these parties. One guy came with borrowed boxing gloves hung around his shoulders, another came wearing a borrowed tux with tails and carrying a top hat and a wand. One lady offered me to loan me a hundred dollar bill to put in my pocket. I turned it down.
If you've never been to a murder mystery dinner party, here's how they work: you are given a character before the party date with costume suggestions and you show up in costume. As you sit down for dinner you’re given a scribe to read and suddenly your dining table turns into a crime scene. For example my introduction speech was: “I’m Lucky Hart, current world poker champion. I don’t want to sound heartless but this murder has come at a really bad time. I’ve got a tournament in Paris tomorrow night and have to be ready. It wasn’t me anyway. Ever since Sterling left us, I’ve been one of the casino's bathrooms practicing my poker face in the mirror. What? You this comes naturally.” There are four times (between courses) where you have a part to read. And all night long there’s ad-lib accusations, drama, suspicious glances and cat-calling between tables going on and way too much laughter for a place where a murder supposedly happened just before you all sit down for the first course.
My suggested costume was jeans, a hoodie over a t-shirt and a baseball cap. I have lots of hoodies but it’s been really hot and I didn’t want to wear one so I bought a light weight shirt with a hood. I also figured out how to use rubber bands to put cards up my sleeves that showed when I waved during my introduction and I bought a $4.00 patch depicting a poker hand that I put on a purse with double-faced tape.
For dinner the chef served five courses consisting of a Caprese Salad with burrata cheese, peaches, tomatoes, basil and microgreens. That was followed by a course of suffron-herb risotto, roasted red pepper and lobster tails. (Myself and another person who is allergic to shell fish got chicken instead of the two tails.) After that course we were given a watermelon with lime zest Sorbet to “cleanse our palate” followed by prime rib, Au-gratin potatoes and asparagus. Dessert was my all-time favorite comfort food. Bread pudding. Not just any bread pudding but bread pudding with bourbon butter sauce and vanilla ice cream that was to die for. Our chef won an Iron Chef Contest over a dozen other chefs working in places like this for a reason and at parties like this her skills really shine. At $25.00 for this meal it was worth going over my food allowance for the month.
If you ever get invited to a mystery murder party, go. Even more fun would be to plan one. Just google Murder Mystery party games. There are several companies making the kits, for various size parties. The one we used came form a UK company. They have seventeen different themes. Ours was the Murder at the Casino and it had characters like: Buck Meister who stole the show. In real life the guy who played the part is a straight arrow, a classy dresser and very wealthy but for the part of Buck—a “red-blooded, ready to ride rodeo cowboy”—he came in jeans, a cowboy hat and boots and a white t-shirt that he’d cut down the front and held it together at the bottom with a big safe pin, his bare chest and gray chest hair hanging out of a very wide V. He’d also cut the sleeves off the t-shirt. You couldn’t help laughing every time he got up to do his speaking parts. Few of us knew he has a good sense of humor. Another standout was a guy at my table who all night long never broke out of character. He was a big, bold mob boss who dressed to kill and literally did. He was going to get me fitted for cement shoes if he ever caught me cheating at his poker table. There was also a magician, a casino floor manager, a crooner, a private detective, a TV reporter, a princess and others parts I’ve forgotten.
What’s great about these parties is that the fun doesn’t just take place at the party itself but also before and afterward they generate a lot of conversation. For example, I was at the lunch table the next day for over two hours and when I went back to my apartment I had a sore belly from laughing so much over the rehashing of the murder mystery. ©
Until Next Wednesday...