Wanting to give students from Gough and from all over campus a unique experience, Gough’s hall council decided to perform a show described by sophomore Eddie Hall as an “interactive-dinner-murder-mystery-comedy.”
“I don’t know if Eastern has done anything like this before,” sophomore Richard Figueroa said.
Hall wrote, directed and starred in the farcical murder-mystery entitled The Truth of Gough Hall. Performed in the Gough Great Room on April 9 and 10, the piece demanded attention and interaction from the audience, which was served a spaghetti dinner.
The play’s plot revolved around the murder of the power-hungry hotel entrepreneur Ricardo Gough, played by Figueroa.
It was the audience’s job to ask the cast questions to find out who the murderer was.
The audience was given a colorful cast of suspects to choose from, including the Gough family: Lovey Gough, Ricardo’s cheating wife, and Junior, the Gough’s sickly son.
Other quirky characters included the narcoleptic hostess Linda, the disloyal hotel manager Mickey Mantero, the painkiller junkie Kitty Mantero and, lastly, the oft-mocked culinary school drop-out Chef Snop.
The audience was given the help of Detective Shlapstick, who was hailed as the world’s worst detective. Shlapstick was joined by Scooby-Doo‘s Velma. A few of the actors had to stretch their talents to play their particular roles.
“Velma was quite the opposite of me,” said junior Alison Maier of her character. “I smile a lot, and she is manic-depressive. It was so hard for me not to laugh, not to smile.”
Senior Angela Houser had a similar experience playing her role.
“Kitty was a different character than I’ve ever played,” she said. “It was very different to act like I was constantly not with-it.”
Gelzhiser’s Mickey Mantero turned out to be the murderer.
“Being at a Christian school, [playing a murderer] was not the easiest thing to do, but sometimes you just have to stretch and do what you can do,” Gelzhiser joked.
A lot of work was put into the dinner-theater by the cast and crew alike.
“It was a little stressful at first,” Figueroa said, “but once we started seeing the fruits of our labor, we started to really get excited about it.”
Junior Ashley Tennis was the administrative director, a position Tennis described as including “a lack of sleep.”
Tennis organized everything behind the scenes besides the actual directing of the play. She was in charge of such areas as the food, cooking, serving and cleaning up.
“[The cast and crew] really did a great job of taking it up themselves,” said Shannon Hartsock, Gough RD.
“They did a great job getting everybody involved.”
In the end, it seemed like the cast and crew were generally pleased with the way things turned out.
“Everyone involved has reason to be proud of what we’ve accomplished after all our troubles,” Houser said.
“I think [the audience] got what they were looking for, if not more,” Maier said. “They were very much entertained.”
“It was something different and unique,” she added, “and that’s what we were looking for.”