A drunken captain, an entertainment director with big dreams, an incognito traveler, a struggling porter and a James Bond-esque partier are heading for Mardi Gras by riverboat. One of them ends up dead and it’s up to you to help solve the mystery.

Every Thursday through May 6, the ACME Mystery Company will be performing “Death Takes a Cruise,” an interactive murder mystery at the Spaghetti Warehouse, located at 689 N. Clinton St.

The ACME Mystery Company was created by Bob Greene when his theater group shut down for business reasons. The Spaghetti Warehouse, where the group had performed many interactive plays, asked Greene to continue with his own company. Now, ACME does more shows away from the Spaghetti Warehouse, as well as private shows.

The company has been performing comedies in a mystery format since Greene founded it 17 years ago; however, the audience interactivity makes these unique. Greene, the managing director and founder of the company, said while other interactive theater companies have come and gone, ACME puts on more than 100 shows a year.

Greene said the interaction between the audience and cast begins with the setting.

“The premise of each show is such that the audience is part of why everyone is in the room,” Greene said. “Everybody is on a riverboat heading for New Orleans. The characters, the actors, and the audience are all there for the same reason, and they’re all part of the same experience.”

While guests sit down for dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse, the cast members begin to mingle between tables. This part of the show is all improvisation and done in character to “warm up” the audience, Greene said. The mingling allows the audience to familiarize themselves with the characters, and also allows the actors to identify willing audience members.

There are usually five characters, one who dies and four who become suspects, each with their own motives being played out during the show. It is up to each audience member to play detective as more details are revealed.

The purpose of “warming up” the audience is that in the second act, the audience starts to play a role in the production, Greene said.

“The audience gets a chance to make their guess as to who did it and why about halfway through the second act. At the end there is an award ceremony where we give certificates of achievement for the best and worst guesses,” Greene said.

Along with their guesses, audience members have the chance to deliver lines or perform various tasks during the show.

A major part of the production is comedy as well, Green said.  The shows are created for an adult audience, and are meant to be funny, but they don’t take it too far with gratuitous profanity or nudity, Greene said.

The ACME Mystery Company has performed for Syracuse University in the past and would be a great experience for an SU student looking to have fun off-campus, Greene said. It also recently performed for the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

With a mix of comedy, mystery and interactivity, Greene believes that the ACME Mystery Company puts on a perfect show for the Syracuse area.

Said Greene: “There is no great moral to be told, there is no life-changing message, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s what we do.”

Published on February 19, 2014 at 10:58 pm

Contact Brendan: bskrisel@syr.edu