The Signal Mountain Playhouse is presenting Tim Kelly’s mystery spoof “The Butler Did It, Again!” for its annual winter production at the Mountain Arts Community Center Feb. 10-11, 17-18 and 24-25.
The cast of Signal Mountain Playhouse’s production of “The Butler Did It, Again!” gathers for a dress rehearsal.Dessert will be served at 6:45 p.m. each night followed by the show at 8 p.m.
“We’ve done several mysteries before and have had good luck with them in the past,” said Anne Rittenberry, publicity director for SMPH. “We liked this one in particular because the characters in the show are all recognizable mystery characters.”
Publisher Miss Maple (Janet McInturff), whose name is a play on the Agatha Christie character Miss Marple, invites a slew of her detective novel friends to a house in the Louisiana bayou to play murder mystery games. She also wants the group to meet Ruth Dice (DeDe Young), whose name rhymes with that of “Interview with the Vampire” author Anne Rice, the first to be suspected when someone in the house ends up dead.
Among Miss Maple’s guests is Chandler Marlowe (Rob Inman), a melding of the names of author Raymond Chandler and his famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe. Mrs. Danvers (Anne Roza) is reminiscent of the mean housekeeper from Alfred Hitchcock’s noir thriller “Rebecca,” and Louie Fan (Eric Schubert) of Earl Derr Biggers’ fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Married couple Rick and Laura (played by real-life husband and wife Don Strickland and Sandy McCrea) are inspired by fictional characters detective Nick Charles and his wife Nora, of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man.”