"Murder Me Always” regarded as killer performance
By Sean Southwell
Staff Writer
the gator times.com

Murder, suspense, mystery, drama, and above all, humor, all came into one compelling performance in the Goleman Players’ presentation of “Murder Me Always,” a play by Lee Mueller. The people who went to see this play were treated to a real show, brimming with audience interaction, non-stop laughs, and to top it all off, a chance to win a free t-shirt for guessing the murderer correctly. The play was presented in a “play within a play” format, in which the actors were playing actors in a show, all set up as a ruse to catch a murderer roaming from theatre to theatre, murdering helpless thespians. Whose job is it to catch the killer before he strikes again?

The stereotypical gumshoe Joe Mamet, played by Esteban Vidal, and his partner Trixie, played by Chantelle Alvarez, who is undercover as the Director’s assistant. During the course of the play, the Director herself is murdered, and thus ends the fake play and begins the mystery. “The heated arguments, the contrast between the fake play and real play, solving the murder, and the chance to win prizes made this show stand out, and the cast worked great together, providing new ideas and having lots of fun,” says Jacqueline Sanchez, the play’s real director.

As it turns out, the whole cast really loved putting this together, and hope the audience loved it just as much. Umberto Suarez, who played the lovable drunk Henry, exclaimed, “Of all the plays I’ve done, this is the best and most unique, and this is by far my favorite role, I’d do it again.” All in all though, the entire cast was pleased with the production, and would like to urge more students to come and support the productions. After seeing just one, it is guaranteed that anyone will be hooked onto the theater.

REVIEW - LIVE THEATER
By Gerry Kowarsky
Special To The Post-Dispatch

"TO WAKE THE DEAD"

Murder mystery dinner theater is an relaxed form of entertainment for the audience, but the performers have to take their roles just as seriously as they would in any other production. The cast fulfills this obligation admirably in "To Wake the Dead," the current offering of Affton CenterStage Theatre Company.

Lee Mueller created the script especially for this production. Mueller is an old hand at this sort of writing. "To Wake the Dead" is his seventh murder mystery for Affton CenterStage. His experience shows.

The action takes place at the time and place of the performance. The occasion: the wake of Fred Finnegan, a successful writer of murder mysteries and supernatural stories. Names based on puns are a common feature of murder mystery dinner theater, and the reference to James Joyce's experimental novel, "Finnegans Wake," is the first of many literary puns.

The hosts of the event are Finnegan's publisher, Leonard Elmore , and his widow, Joyce It soon becomes clear that Finnegan died under suspicious circumstances. He fell out of a hotel window. His soul is not at rest, and his ghost is present at the wake.
One of the other mourners, former police chief Wambaugh , is at odds with a shady figure named Danny Runyon over casino gambling. Another policeman, Officer Francis is with the chief, while Danny is accompanied by his "special friend," Peaches Marie Crabtree.

Rounding out the mourners are a reporter named Agatha Fletcher and three of Finnegan's most eccentric fans: Clyde Barker, Deena Koonce and Stephanie King. The mystery has enough suspicious characters to make challenging, but the solution makes sense when it is finally revealed.

Mueller smoothly works in opportunities for the audience to ask questions of the characters and submit written theories of the crime.

YHS Murder Mystery dinner theatre a Success!
by LINDA DORSETT-OTTA
Yucaipa News Mirror
Yucaipa, California

People attending Yucaipa High School's (YHS) Mystery Theatre on Friday became guests to a wedding reception as they entered the campus multi-purpose room. Lee Mueller's hilarious romp into the intricacies of a wedding reception in the play, “I'm Getting Murdered in the Morning,” was the feature of the evening. Ulises Espinoza was the director with Brooke Borrowman as associate director. As the audience members was being shown to their seats, they became guests at a wedding reception.

The proud parents of the bride, Mildred and Harold Montague, mingled with their guests, explaining the bride and groom had car trouble on the way to the wedding and would soon arrive. It quickly becomes apparent that Mildred had a drinking problem. She kept leaving the reception to visit an open bar at a neighboring wedding. Each time she re-entered her daughter's reception, her appearance was a little more bedraggled. Her speech was slurred and her balance was off. Some of the wedding guests left when they found out they were actually in the wrong reception - they should have been in the one next door - the one with the open bar.

The bride and groom arrived at the reception after dinner had been served. The bride, being a real “daddy's girl,” demanded food right then and there.

The bride tossed the bouquet and the groom was tossing the bride's garter to the single men when an unknown man falls dead to the dance floor from a gunshot wound. Daddy's little girl insists on continuing her wedding reception despite the body on the floor. She dances with her father while the body is moved to and fro away from their dancing feet.

With the disc jockey, the groom's mother Mrs. Coquette, the bridesmaid, best man, damage-control expert and society columnist rounding out the “who-might-have-done-its,” the reception guests were kept entertained by music and the antics. The cute, effervescent disc jockey played her part well as a smart aleck. Her comments throughout the play were superb. Mrs. Coquette's southern charm was well played in her quips such as “He got around like a June bug at a candlelight vigil.”

The repartee between Mr. Parker and the society columnist Mary Berger was heated and confrontational and added to the humor and the fast pace of the play. These two kept on querying the wedding party to try to figure out who was the murderer.

The play moved quickly with never a dull moment - even in the serving of the food. There were a few embarrassing moments such as when the restaurant ran out of ice cream. The excuse was that the servers had become hungry and ate the dessert reserved for the guests. After a short while, more ice cream arrived and was served to the deprived guests.

Espinoza said he was very pleased with the turn-out and that it was the biggest “in at least the last two years - probably more than ever before.”

The high energy of the cast, crew and waiters played a role in the well executed play and the cast knew their parts. They seemed to have as much fun performing their roles as did their guests watching them. A special thanks was given to all the waiters.

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