SOMETHING’S AFOOT
(1981)
After the trauma of the “negative reviews” for “Annie Get Your Gun, critics who suggested we do smaller productions, newspaper letters, actors who felt embarrassed by the public criticism and left the Drama Club, we did two ‘smaller productions’ for school year 1981-82 (not that we were following our critic’s suggestion!). The first of these ‘smaller productions’ was the ingenious musical mystery-comedy “Something’s Afoot” a spoof on an Agatha Christie mystery. Despite the songs and numerous funny lines, the show kept the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats trying to figure out the identity of the murderer. Filled with some ‘delightful’ ways of murdering the victims, the twisting plot line saw the number of surviving cast members gradually get ‘bumped off’. Who was the killer?
The night that the School District Superintendent was in the audience, our stage crew member in charge of special effects put a little too much “black powder” in a flashpot that was to “explode” and “kill” one of the victims in the play. The “explosion” happened right on cue and a funnel of smoke rapidly made its way to the ceiling above the stage. The problem was that the funnel found the smoke detector and set off the alarms. Someone (we won’t say who) managed to locate the alarm buttons and shut it off but the alarm had rung for about five minutes. The action in the play was halted temporarily but NO ONE in the audience had vacated the theatre.The play resumed and all was well....until the Superintendent’s inquest of the episode the next day in my office. The Superintendent was not amused and neither was the Fire Department!
Another memory from this show was the “appearance” of Jimmy Morrell as a pygmy (not even listed in the cast list for the "surprise effect" !!!!!) The pygmy was hidden inside a table set piece and was to emerge from under a hinged bowl of fruit to blow a poison dart into Colonel Gilweather’s neck thus murdering the Colonel. For his stage appearance of only a few seconds, Jimmy was required to be under the table throughout the entire second act of the play with no way on or off the stage. Our dedicated actor was also required to be painted blue!....that’s show biz!...Jimmy was not listed on the cast list so the audience wouldn’t be aware of the “surprise” murderer’s appearance until it actually happened.
Yar Recned, the artist formerly known as “A.N. Other”, supplied the “voice” of Lord Rancour
