Mystery Dessert Theatre

My husband and I went to a "Murder By Chocolate" theatre presentation over in Kemah tonight. There were two choices... the dinner theatre or the dessert theatre. We found their menu on the Internet and weren't impressed with the dinner choices, so we opted to try out the dessert theatre.

There were about 25 people there, and about a dozen of them had speaking parts, myself and my husband included. The staff seemed to be a bit disorganized, as if they hadn't had too much practice with taking dessert orders and serving, plus the director/narrator of the little play took his sweet time in finding and handing out the props. He was very entertaining once he got his act together, however. (Pardon the pun!)

Once the audience-performers all got their scripts and started in with the speaking roles, the little play went along very nicely, very smoothly, with lots of laughs and ad-libs along the way. (The desserts weren't exactly five-star (not even two-star) and we thought the $18-per-person charge was over-priced.) But we ended up having a good time after the slow start of the staff, and that's what counts.

Our reason for going to the mystery theatre was to see how it was all scripted and carried out, because we've been thinking of doing just such a thing for our Halloween party this year. On the drive home, my husband and I both said that we could put together a mystery play ourselves and have it come out better than what we took part in tonight.

As I type, it's nearly 1:30 in the morning...... and I've been busy writing characters for our version of a Mystery Dinner Theatre. So far, my title is "The Cat's Meow Mystery" and I've got ten characters and their outlines all scripted out. (Must be all the sugar in the "Dark Shadow" chocolate cake that I had at the little theatre tonight... I came home with a sugar buzz and quickly grabbed a pen and a notebook and got to writing.)

I've got the characters all named, and I even picked out our friends who would do well with each particular character. Of course, I would call them all way before the party and ask them if they'd like to star in the "play" -- our intent is to have fun and host a great party, not to embarrass anyone.

I still have to write the dialogue for each individual character, but I've got the plot, made notes of the props needed for each "actor," decided on the "crime," and picked the culprit and their motive. My husband can print off all the scripts on his computer, once I get it all written.

Let's see.... Halloween is four months away. Plenty of time to get this all together.

Rule #14: "After having a great party (last night) the only thing to do is start planning the next party.