Limelight Theater will open their production of the murder mystery comedy “Murder Most Fowl” at Paine’s Restaurant, where guests will enjoy the dinner theater show starting Friday. The show will be performed March 8-10 and 15-17.
“The premise of it is about a cooking network,” said Sally Hail, a founder of Limelight Productions and the director of the show. “All we’ve been doing is watching cooking shows.”
In the play, a cooking network sponsors a chicken-cooking contest with famous chefs showing up to compete in a high school cafeteria. But when a lunch lady is found dead, the mystery ensues.
The show features local actors ages 11 to 18, with a few of the younger kids playing the roles of high school students in the show while the teenagers play the adult roles in the show.
Hail said the production this year included an introduction to video skills as well as live acting. Some friends of Hail’s from Los Angeles who own a production company came to San Benito to teach the students how to make commercials. The students did promos for the faux cooking shows from the play, with the kids teaming up to write, direct and produce five commercials that will be shown during the play.
“It’s a little different and interesting,” Hail said. “I’ve never worked with it and Paine’s has an enormous video screen.”
While many children’s and teen theater productions are musicals, “Murder Most Fowl” has no music or dancing in it.
“They get something different out of it,” Hail said. “I know it’s hard to believe but a lot of kids don’t like to sing and dance. We get kids who do this who just don’t like musicals.”
Hail said the play provides an opportunity for the kids to work on developing their characters more because they are not spending time to learn a dance or song. The students even shopped at a thrift store for their costumes in their character. She gave out prizes to the actors who stayed in character the best as they shopped.
“They all have different accents and some of them have never done it in their lives,” Hail said. “They are finding it challenging, but I think it stretches them more. We do a lot of character games and we will do improve, but they have to do it in character.”
Dinner is included in the ticket price and Hail said she always aims to have the show run on St. Patrick’s Day.
“We close on St. Patrick’s Day and we are going to have a corned beef and cabbage feed,” she said.
Hail said she was happy to connect with the owners of Paine’s, Tony and Lorraine Garcia, for the show’s location.
“You are doing kids’ theater – not adult theater – so it’s nice to find people really wanting to back you and help you,” she said.
‘Murder Most Fowl’:
The show runs March 8, 9, 15 and 16, with doors opening at 6 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m. and the show starting at 7 p.m. March 10 and 17 doors open at 1 p.m., with a meal served at 1:30 p.m. and the show to start at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 a person, including dinner and the show. A four-pack is available for $80 and a table of eight is available for $170. For more details and tickets, visit http://www.limelighttheatrical.com/.
