MYSTERY MEET : Care for Corpses Between Courses?

A woman screamed. At her feet, a body, motionless and clothed in a sequined evening gown, was draped across the steps of a church.

A teen-age couple out for an evening stroll through Old World in Huntington Beach heard the scream and watched the scene in horror. But before they could react, a curious thing happened.

About 60 people, most of them middle-aged and dressed for a night on the town (and all of them wearing name tags), trotted out from around a corner. Some saw the body and broke into applause. Others laughed and joked.

For the young couple, the horror changed to bewilderment.

Welcome to the world of audience-participation mystery theater, where the killing is all in fun. In a twist on old-fashioned dinner theaters, audience members not only get dinner and a show, but also take part in the action. Although the degree of participation varies, guests talk to the characters, dig up clues and get a chance to guess the killer before the solution is revealed.

Blame it on “Tamara,” L.A.’s looooong-running granddaddy of interactive theater, where the audience prowls the rooms of an Italian villa in search of clues. It’s been going strong since 1984, a success story that has helped spawn a growing number of like productions in Orange County--four, at current count.

The first production here to take a serious stab at the genre, in 1989, was “The Laguna Baron,” now on hiatus. The audience congregated at a Laguna Beach bookstore and was led to a restaurant and an art gallery in an effort to solve the murder of a wealthy socialite. The production ran in various incarnations until the end of last summer.

Of the productions currently running in Orange County, two involve a similar bit of outdoor wandering for the audience, while two are stationary experiences (both, as it happens, are set in prohibition-era nightclubs).

Whodunit buffs take note, though: While all involve murders of one sort or another (mostly shootings, although one poor victim is inexplicably strangled and stabbed in the neck), none is as sophisticated as “Tamara,” and only one of the four makes mystery the main course. At the others, it’s more of a side dish.

* “Murder at the Conga Club”: The most polished of the productions in the county takes place at South Coast Plaza Village in Santa Ana, where a vacant shop has been transformed into a ‘20s nightspot, the Conga Club, complete with a speak-easy hidden in the back. Guests even are given chips so they can try their hands at roulette, blackjack or poker; in the meantime, they get their first chances to mingle with the characters in the drama that unfolds.

It is one year exactly since the unsolved murder of the club’s singer, Julie Rose. The singer’s twin sister has engaged the services of Sherlock Holmes himself to uncover the culprit. The chief suspects are assembled, the motives are spelled out, the crime is re-enacted.

The proceedings are whimsical--there is a dance number by a character in a gorilla suit, along with an audience-participation conga line through the shopping center--but the production does not abandon the mystery element. There are clues and red herrings galore, and the astute observer will be able to puzzle out the solution along with Holmes.

Instead of the banquet-style offering customary at this kind of thing, dinner is offered at five restaurants in the shopping center; a guest can pick whichever one he or she wants. Characters from the drama drop by each restaurant to talk with diners and keep the thread of the mystery going. The evening ends up back in the club, where the killer is unmasked.

The production is the work of Play Mystery for Me, a company that also offers a periodic mystery cruise to Catalina and other multi-day murder mystery events.

* “Encore”: This one is billed as a “comedy mystery dinner theater” with the emphasis on comedy. Written and directed by Brian Mann, an alumnus of “The Laguna Baron,” it takes place in Old World, the kitschy German-style shopping and restaurant complex in Huntington Beach.

Of the four local productions, this is the only one with a contemporary setting: A reception for a longtime movie actress who has penned her memoirs, the occasion serves primarily as a pretext for lots of bitchy sniping between the characters. The actors (especially Mann) are quick with the one-liners, and “Encore” takes pains to involve audience members in the banter.

The evening includes a walking tour of Old World, ostensibly to view memorabilia (displayed in shop windows) from the actress’s career. There is a murder, and motives galore, but “Encore” mysteriously fails to provide any real clues for would-be sleuths in the audience. Guests are asked to guess the culprit, but it’s pretty much a crapshoot. The information necessary to solve the murder doesn’t emerge until the last few minutes of the evening.

Dinner and appetizers are decidedly German, in keeping with the surroundings. The wine and champagne flow freely, adding to the evening’s ribald flavor.

* “Razzmatazz” and “Mumm’s the Word”: Though unrelated, these two productions have much in common. Each attempts to re-create the atmosphere of a ‘20s speak-easy with gangsters, flappers and other characters who also do the serving. The entertainment and scene-setting come between courses; the mysteries, alas, are murky, playing second fiddle to musical numbers and campy playacting. Both, by coincidence, have major characters named “Lucky.”

Though you’ll have ample opportunity to talk with the actors, you’ll remain seated during the course of the evening. In fact, these musical comedies are only one step beyond conventional dinner theater, and a tentative step at that.

“Mumm’s the Word,” a production of Mystery Cafe, takes place in Irvine’s Mezzanine Restaurant, in the Brinderson Towers. “Razzmatazz” is in Anaheim at the site of a former medieval-style dinner theater.

The actors in interactive mysteries face some challenges that performers in conventional theater do not. Brian Mann says it’s “like a party, but controlled.” Members of the audience must be encouraged to participate, but actors must stay in control and keep the story moving forward.

And there are unique hazards. Baron Mosely, the writer of “Murder at the Conga Club,” remembers a show at a Hollywood hotel where a performer was supposed to “shoot” a fellow actor, take an elevator to the lobby and head to the pool area.

“He was into his character,” Mosely recalls, “and having fun, and running through the hotel with his gun. He got down to the pool and was knocked down” by plainclothes agents.

Unbeknownst to the actors, then-President Reagan was due to visit the hotel later that same day. The agents preparing for the visit were unaware of the drama upstairs. The result, needless to say, was not in the script.

Mystery Dinner Shows

“Murder at the Conga Club” is performed each Saturday at 7 p.m. at South Coast Plaza Village, Sunflower Avenue and Bear Street in Santa Ana. Admission: $55. Information on this and other “Play Mystery for Me” productions: (714) 675-9726.

“Encore” is offered each Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Old World German Restaurant, 7561 Center Ave. in Huntington Beach. Admission: $48. Information: (714) 895-8020.

“The Razzmatazz” is at 821 S. Beach Blvd., Anaheim, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m. Admission: $29.95. Information: (714) 995-5464.

“Mumm’s the Word” is presented at the Mezzanine Restaurant in the Brinderson Towers, 19800 MacArthur Blvd. in Irvine, Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 7 p.m. Admission: $48. Information: (714) 955-2583.

All prices include dinner.