Fringe 2019 – Vote For Murder – The Usual School Suspects

Imagine taking the classic whodunit board game Clue and turning it into a fun night of puzzle-solving and eliminating suspects. That’s what you’re in for when you experience Vote for Murder, one of the better immersive ‘game’ events in recent years. After nearly having their entire event murdered by unexpected problems with their original site, 2cents Theatre Company has fortunately revived the experience with quick help from the Hobgoblin Playhouse at The Arena Stage and their venue managers, Greg and Jenn Crafts.

For a show that had to revise their original plans thanks to the unexpected move, they’ve done a fantastic job with the new site. It was quite hard to believe this wasn’t the original location thanks to the innovate uses they’ve given various nooks and corners of the theater.

It takes no time at all to be right back in that old high school vibe as you are brought in as brand new freshman to vote for the new school president. You are immediately introduced to various characters, all of whom have names like Scarlett and Obsidian and Green, names that reflect right back to that board game inspiration. There’s even a principal named Wadsworth (an amusing reference to Clue, the cult comedy movie also inspired by the game). Each character is a traditional high school type that we all recognize so well from way back in the John Hughes era.

Unfortunately, before the vote can happen, we find out that one of the choices has been killed. Worse still, the killer is one of the other candidates and has decided to play a game with all of the remaining individuals in the high school. Faster than you can say “but I’m just a newbie here,” you find yourself placed in a team with one of the suspects and you’re off and running to figure out the real killer’s name, their motive, and their choice of deadly weapon. As I said, Clue-inspired.

The fun of Vote for Murder comes in how effectively your team is able to find and solve puzzles. At the performance I attended, my team was fast on the draw and solved quite a few puzzles. We even split ourselves into smaller groups to try and double our chances at points. And it turned out to be an effective decision as we solved the killer’s game correctly (I even have a certificate to prove it!). We found most of the puzzles to be thought-provoking, but not impossible to solve. There was one exception, but in that case there was some unintended miscommunication between the performer and the group that caused confusion. In an immersive situation with this type of game, such things will occasionally happen.

The characters in Vote for Murder are also something wonderful to behold. My team’s suspect, Hannah Trujillo, did an outstanding job as the drama star of the school. Jennifer Ashe’s Principal Wadsworth was exactly the type of slightly-muddle-brained head of a school that you expect to find anywhere. Jonny Perl’s Mortimer Mustard was just as stuffy and rule-following a hall monitor as his name would suggest. And the rest of the cast was equally wonderful in every encounter I had with them.

The only downsides that I found in Vote for Murder were ones that I find in quite a few sandbox-type experiences. Multiple times, teams were sent to the same suspect at the same time, a problem when the rules specifically precluded one team talking to a suspect when another team was already there. When creating a show like this, I think it’s imperative that creators actually plan out the paths of each person/team that they intend to have so as to avoid such crossed paths. Audiences get very frustrated very quickly when they’re told they have ‘x’ amount of time to solve something and then get stuck with nothing to do because they have to wait for another team to finish. It’s a common issue in immersive experiences like this and one that can be solved with planning paths so that each group heads to a different person at least for the first segment of time. Over a given performance, some teams will finish tasks faster than others so some overlap may always be present. But it’s crucial, in my opinion, for shows like these to work as hard as possible to minimize such – it only creates a more exciting performance for the audience when you do.

The other issue I found was one that happened not to my team but to a different one. There was a team at my performance that never managed to solve a single puzzle. There may be many reasons for this but, again, that’s a problem that an immersive team doesn’t want to have happen as it can lead to very negative reactions. This sort of problem can be solved in many ways, such as having a character whose sole job is to watch for such teams/individuals and help them find something to do. Other options could work just as well. The importance is making sure that you do plan for such problems beforehand and create solutions so that they can be implemented on the fly during a given performance. In the case of 2cents Theatre Company, I’m sure they did an enormous amount of planning. These two issues are simply ones that I spot easily because they come up in LARPs as well, and I’ve seen dozens of solutions implemented to good use within that community.

Overall, I found Vote for Murder to be a great experience. The premise was familiar but fun. The acting was top-notch with a cast that handled the improvisational nature of the show solidly. I love the fact that it was an actual game and that the solution changes from performance to performance (just like the old board game). And I love the fact that you can return to experience the event again (although I wonder if the puzzles are different from night to night. I hope so; otherwise the return value would be far less worthwhile). What you don’t need to wonder about is whether this is a show worth seeing. It is 100% an enjoyable, exciting and fun night. Anyone who’s ever played Clue will love Vote for Murder. Vote for Murder Vote for Murder Vote for Murder

Find out more information on Vote for Murder and buy tickets here. Keep up to date with all of our Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019 coverage here. Follow our Event Guide for more news and reviews throughout the year.

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