Murder on Cue Has Theatergoers on the Run Around Town

It was during the conga dance at the famous Sassland Music Palace that the murder occurred.

About 30 guests at Amy Nichols’ 20th birthday party were sashaying around a table when a blood-curdling scream was heard. They found the body sprawled over a desk in a downstairs office, the victim hacked to death with a meat cleaver.

So they put on their thinking caps and, by the end of a long evening, one of the guests--Bill Lawson of Long Beach--had solved the crime. Not, however, before journeying to the waterfront in search of clues, eating dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and witnessing another death by stabbing. But don’t worry. It was all for show.

“I attribute it to my accounting background,” Lawson said later of his successful debut as a sleuth. And the $100 prize he won for solving the mystery? “I’ll probably spend part of it coming to the next show,” he said.

Not in Tourist Guide

But don’t look for the Sassland Music Palace in any tourist guide. (It’s in Long Beach.) And don’t expect an invitation to Amy Nichols’ birthday party without paying the price.

“It’s the theater of the 1980s,” said Errol Mosely, a lawyer who designs sets on the side.

Added Baron Mosely, his brother and the playwright: “Husbands stay awake here. They never stay awake in ordinary theater.”

“Here” is any production of Murder Mysteries Inc., a theater company with a difference. Whereas traditional theater makes clear distinctions between audience and cast, this one puts both on a single stage that can encompass a city. And, whereas most dramatic mysteries are solved by the script, this one gives customers a chance to figure it out.

No Mere ‘Sitting Down’

“People are more active today,” Errol Mosely, 27, said. “They don’t want to just be sitting down.”

So Murder Mysteries Inc. stages dramas utilizing actors in the main roles and members of the audience as extras. The job of the cast: to act out the central scenes of the drama and dispense clues. The job of the audience: to follow the trail throughout the city and solve the crime. Whereas other companies offer Southern Californians participatory mystery tours of various stripes, the brothers say, theirs is unusual because the mysteries last only one evening and transpire mostly in Long Beach.

“We are really showing off the city,” said Baron Mosely, 32, who writes most of the scripts from ideas that he says he gets “between 2 and 4 a.m.” A theater arts graduate of California State University, Long Beach, he formed the company with his brother and five friends earlier this year after the more traditional Genesis Theater Co., which he had been with three years, went broke.

“I thought I was through with theater,” he said. “But I remembered doing a mystery party once in college. It was the most fun I had.”

Quit Car Dealership

Two months ago he quit a job at a car dealership to pursue mystery theater full time. Other regular company members volunteer to do such things as design sets and handle sound engineering. But the actors, who are hired independently for each show, are paid modest wages.

And, although an average of 60 people have purchased $35 to $40 tickets for each performance of the company’s six productions, Baron Mosely said he’s not getting rich. “To say I make a living is an exaggeration,” he said. “I starve to death.”

Poverty certainly wasn’t evident, however, during a recent performance of “Murder on the Menu,” at which the older Mosely brother, dressed as a butler, mingled with paying guests and members of the cast to “keep things on track.”

It hardly seemed necessary, though, as members of the mystery entourage, guided by maps, drove their cars on cue from the Sassland Music Palace (actually an old church on Cedar Avenue and 7th Street) to a site near the harbor, where a musical character named Beaumont C. Hospice III spouted clues during three performances of the same song. Later they drove to the Dah Hua Chinese Restaurant on Broadway, where the action continued over dinner, and finally back to the Sassland to solve the mystery.

Tour of Long Beach

Significant sites in previous mystery productions have included the Queen Mary, Shoreline Village, Long Beach Marina and the Works Gallery.

Things don’t always go smoothly. Once, according to the brothers, a water taxi overloaded with would-be detectives began to sink. “We quickly unloaded onto the dock,” Baron Mosely said. “Then the dock began to sink.” Another time, a couple of sleuths mistakenly drove their trucks into the ocean in search of clues. “The police never understood how it all happened,” the author said.

Even opening night of “Murder on the Menu” saw its share of mishaps.

“We had to walk all over Long Beach,” said Susie Swenson, 23, whose car broke down and remained parked near the Sassland Palace after the first act. Swenson, an office manager from Bellflower, said she had gone primarily to see her brother, Ben Swenson, who played Beaumont C. Hospice III. But because of a dead battery, she said, she missed most of the play, including her brother’s musical performance by the harbor.

“It was a bummer,” she said.

‘A Little Off’

Ben didn’t seem to mind. “It was a little off,” he said of the opening-night performance. “I didn’t get the song right until the third time.” If they suspected the difference, most of the amateur detectives weren’t letting on. “It’s very entertaining,” said Linda Kay, a teacher from Los Angeles. “It’s quite a congenial crowd.”

Added Jean Davis, a Salvation Army transport supervisor who lives in Long Beach: “I thought it would be a stage play that you could watch like you watch television.”

She said she wasn’t disappointed, however. “Next I want to see the vampire,” she said, alluding to the company’s next production, after “Murder on the Menu” closes on Sept. 28. Among the most satisfied on opening night were some of the actors and actresses themselves. “It felt very good,” said Shelley Poncy, 32, the owner of a Naples hair salon who played a character named Guinevere.

Gary Iles, 43, a Long Beach business consultant, said he plays characters like Sir Hugo Bastibule because it’s “cheaper than a therapist and a hell of a lot more fun.” He said that having to work so close to the audience was exciting.