By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
It’s a show! With pies! With murder!
No, it’s not “Sweeney Todd,” so no Sondheim tunes.
But “Murder at the Pie Auction” does offer plenty of laughs, and actual pies that members of the audience can bid on, buy and bring home. So bring dough — it’s no mystery that this is a fundraiser for the Black Swamp Players. Rest assured no cast members were harmed in the baking of these pies. All 13 of them seem to be having too good a time presenting this farce.
“Murder at the Pie Auction” by Michael Druce and directed by Liam Ellis will be presented Friday, March 14, and Saturday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in the troupe’s home at 115 E. Oak St. Click for tickets. Tickets are apparently selling like hot cakes with only a few available for Friday and Saturday, and more for the Sunday matinee.
The play is set in Mynute, Alaska, where the Mother Mable’s Pie Baking Competition and Auction is being held.
Phoebe Muffet (Beth Parker) editor of the local paper and Minaret Towers (Betsy Herman) the local organizer are excited about hosting the national event.
On the other hand, the Mother Mable’s coordinator Felicity Hubbard (Eve Barman) is appalled. This gives her all the more reason to abuse her assistant Melanie Tucker (Rebecca Williams). Apparently Tucker’s secretary mixed up Minot, North Dakota with Mynute, Alaska, which according to Hubbard gives wastelands everywhere a bad name. How will the contest get any publicity in a place like this? The company needs the competition to be a splash given the sudden rise of the emerging competitor Granny Goode.
Then the contestants, the upper crust of the pie baking world, arrive, or at least most of them.
They include Julia (Emily Harel) who is vying to win the contest for a fifth year in the row, and again with her very cherry cherry pie. We learn early on the fix is already in as Guy Templeton (Steve Bishop) is being blackmailed to assure she wins.
Others top bakers on hand are former lovers Eve Simone (Rachel Hetrick) and Roger Marble (Justin Michael Newcomb), Julia’s chief rival.
This is just one instance of a complex of canoodling among them, all of which baker Betty Botter plans to reveal in a tell-all book. But she hasn’t been seen in weeks.
Pie baking apparently is a cutthroat business, Phoebe says.
The a body is discovered in the freezer.
Also on hand is quasi-star of stage and screen Rex Roberts (Trevor Walsh), who flounce about on the edge of the competition for no apparent reason. His appearance does prove handy to the plot.
Others in the cast are: Wendie Kiskaddon, Melanie Missler, Hunter Kazmierczak, and Emily Standinger.
And during the live auction midday through, the audience members will have a chance to get in the action.
