Sutter High serves up 'Murder with Tomato Sauce'

Murder will mix with dinner and humor this weekend as the Sutter Union High School Drama Club will perform "Murder with Tomato Sauce."

The production is a murder-mystery-comedy, said the play's director, Rick Tuttle. "It's a spoof of the Agatha Christie shows. It has a very quick pace and a lot of funny dialogue."

The plot involves Det. Rathbone (played by Helen Jackson) inviting the world's greatest detectives to dinner and challenges them to solve a murder. These detectives include Mr. and Mrs. Higgenbotham (played by Tyler Stone and Christina Barbaccia, respectively); Rupert (played by Katelyn Eaton and Spencer King); Jones (played by Jacob Bradley); Cynthia Salt (played by Laura Burroughs); Jupiter Kingsley (played by John LaBouyer); and Boston Yard (played by Meaghan Condrey).

Dinner begins — so does the murders. Soon, the detectives themselves find themselves the victims. So the remaining sleuths have to solve who the murderer is before they all end up dead.

"We've done Agatha Christie shows before, but this spoof really caught our attention with the quick pace, witty dialogue and twists and turns," Tuttle said.

Since the play is set in an Italian restaurant, the production will be dinner theater for the Saturday and Monday performances, serving spaghetti.

"It makes for a fun night of theater and it helps us achieve the blurring between the action happening on stage and that happening in the audience," Tuttle said.

This means the audience will be a part of the show. "The audience will get to cast ballots for who they think is the murderer. And some people will be pulled from the audience," Tuttle said.

The play is "wildly entertaining. The laughs come early and often. If the audience has as much fun watching the play as we have had in rehearsing it, they will thoroughly enjoy it."