Seniors stage murder mystery, discover thrill of performing

Posted 4/7/15

There was adultery, high class scandal, murder and a whole lot of laughs last week at the Pilgrim Senior Center, as the center’s Theatre Stars performed their original murder mystery play, …

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Seniors stage murder mystery, discover thrill of performing

Posted

There was adultery, high class scandal, murder and a whole lot of laughs last week at the Pilgrim Senior Center, as the center’s Theatre Stars performed their original murder mystery play, “Marriage is a Killer.”

Theatre Stars is a program created out of a partnership between The Artists’ Exchange and the Senior Center that began last fall. The Artists’ Exchange is an arts collaboration non-profit using the arts to bring communities together.

Jessica Chace, the theatre manager for Artists’ Exchange, visits the Pilgrim Senior Center every Friday to have some of their own clients with disabilities work closely with the seniors.

“We want to see integration of all abilities,” Chace said, “so we offer this program for free and bring our clients from the Artists’ Exchange to meet with the seniors.”

She said the seniors “dove right in,” helping the clients practice and come up with play ideas. This was the second show of the program.

Everyone helped to contribute to the original play, but much of the show was improvisational, using a lot of audience involvement but following a general plot line.

Chace said, “Everyone chimes in with ideas. I’ll get emails from them sometimes with ideas they have come up with.”

The play opened up with the discovery of Lucy Eldridge, dead in Narragansett Bay on the night of her sister Elizabeth Eldridge’s wedding to Richard Freeman, played by Kathy Eastman and John Sives, respectively. The car she was driving hit a stone wall and her “body was flung into the harbor.”

Twenty years later, when new evidence comes to light, Detective Matt Lock, played by Harry Fogell, his assistant Joan Marple, Gail Felix and granddaughter Patty Lock, Jessica Chace, seek justice at the anniversary dinner of Elizabeth and Richard.

“Someone in this room is a murderer!” Matt Lock announces. The fun begins.

The cast includes the entire wedding party: the maid of honor played by Trish Fenton; the best man, Greg Smith; Beverly Lucas as Auntie Mae, the godmother; the flower girl, Erika Gardner; Claudia Littlefield, the gossip; City Council President Kathleen Monahan; Lynda Takoudes as the housekeeper; Liz Rodgers as the gardener; and Maryann Famiano as the chauffer. Tom Chace performed on the piano.

Each character is interrogated to see if they could have been the murderer. The audience discovers Lucy is not the naive and innocent character she was once believed to be but known among the staff as the “fringe benefits of the job,” even having an affair with her sister’s fiancé.

There was some question about the gardener for, “they always deal in dirt” and he could have “planted the evidence,” but when the audience guessed wrong the housekeeper came forward with a confession. She said she had wanted to kill the cheating fiancé but Lucy had accidentally taken the car with cut brakes.

“It was my duty to defend the Eldridge family. I wanted him to drive out of our lives forever,” she said.

Many of the members of Theatre Stars have never acted before, but you wouldn’t know it from their enthusiasm on Friday. When asked why, Claudia Littlefield said, “We are old now, what have we got to lose?”

Lynda Takoudes, who played the murdering housekeeper, said this was her first show and she can’t wait to return to the program for their next show.

“It is fun and creative we can bring our own ideas. I thought performing was going to feel strange but I loved it and it felt good,” she said.

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