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Not too long ago (see the January 2004 Fun With Stuff column), my wife Sharron and I attended Mystery Dinner Theater in Long Beach. We had so much fun we decided we would go again as soon as we could afford it. By our estimates, that would be roughly about the time we became eligible to cash in on our 401k plans.
Fortunately, family members were aware of our plight, as well as my seemingly endless hunger for good food and goofy entertainment. The family came to the rescue and bought us tickets to go see The Gourmet Detective, which is exactly like Mystery Dinner Theater, except different. It was different because it was at the Mezzanine Restaurant in Irvine rather than on a boat in the Long Beach Harbor and because they began the meal right away rather than after I had become so hungry that I bit one of the actors. "Feed your guests" is a rule I recommend and that I recommend often, especially when I'm away from home. At home, I don't take it too seriously. Across from us at the table during The Gourmet Detective was a couple who had recently been to a Mystery Dinner event at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The set up, they told us, was similar to that of the show we were going to be seeing except (and this was probably wise) the animals had been fed first. The setting of The Gourmet Detective was a 1950s radio show, supposedly the very first national broadcast of a program called The Buck Tinney Hour. The story revolved around the murder of not just one, but several people, with the murders occurring throughout the show. While there were no actual murders committed during the show (only pretend ones), there were multiple instances of fork theft. You see, the actors in The Gourmet Detective were also our food servers. This allowed for natural interaction between the actors and the audience, plus it enabled the actors to get tips. Had I been able to give them tips of the advice type, I would have told them that their acting was of the highest caliber, but I would appreciate it if they stopped taking my fork. Among the suspects for stealing my fork were the stage manager, the singer Eva LaGorge, the "Buffalo Pals" Dorothy Malloy and her vegetarian friend Jojo, as well as the advice columnist Lillian Marmalade, who looked suspiciously like a man, as, I am told, I do. Any of these characters could have stolen my fork, or have committed the murder of the main character Buck Tinney, but that now seemed secondary. As the show progressed another character, a French chef, played by the actor who had played Buck Tinney earlier, was poisoned. In this way the Gourmet Detective was similar to the Mystery Dinner Theater, both had multiple murders of different characters who were all played by the same actor. As the actors served us our main course, they apologized for "all the deaths." We had chosen the salmon for our dinner, which couldn't have been better. I was glad that I hadn't chosen the steak because, from what I could tell from looking at the plates around me, the cow had not been killed quite as effectively as had some of the murder victims in the show. I asked one of the players for a fork so that I could eat my salmon. "Fork it over spoontaneously or I’ll knife you," I said. "Perhaps it’s safer if you let us perform the jokes," the actress serving us commented, handing me the fork that belonged to the person next to me. The salmon was excellent. It was, pardon the expression, to die for. I feared momentarily that I had died and gone to heaven. Soon everyone was going to have to figure out who had killed me. (The answer would have been, of course, the chef.) The play grew increasingly funny. (How do they do that? I wondered.) We learned that everyone had a motive for killing Buck Tinney, as well as the French chef, and, more recently, the owner of the radio show itself. This last murder victim was introduced into the play three-quarters of the way through, and was shortly thereafter strangled with a microphone cord. We also learned that Lillian Marmalade was indeed a man. I burped up some salmon at that point, confirming that I, too, was a man in the truest sense of the word. So. The wrap up for the crimes committed in The Gourmet Detective was very similar to that of our previous Mystery Dinner Theater experience. As the end neared, we got a chance to guess who had committed the murders. This was done during dessert, at which time I looked around to notice that we had all resorted to eating our cheesecake with our spoons. I was not so observant, however, about the details of the play. For, once again, I guessed wrong about the identity of the murderer. Sharron, on the other hand, guessed right. Then she changed her mind and wrote down the wrong answer. Regardless, the show and the food were absolutely excellent. They both had an entirely different flavor from our previous Mystery Dinner Theater experience, and yet each was so good that I doubt I could recommend one over the other, unless someone gave us free tickets to go one of them again. That brings me to our plan. Our plan now is to continue going to Mystery Dinner events until we can solve one or until we no longer fit into the car to drive there. Of course, we can't afford the tickets, but we do have plenty of birthdays and anniversaries coming up and you have our mailing address, right? Good. I knew you could take a hint. |
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