View to a kill Bal Masque: High-society homicide By Bill Rodriguez

Well, it was in the ballroom with the arsenic, but did the butler do it, or perhaps the jealous spouse? Murder at Bal Masque is one of those audience-participation murder mysteries popular during the summer, but one with a difference: it’s so interactive that we feel we’ve stepped into a board game rather than watching a play.

The setting is the Astor’s Beechwood Mansion, on Newport’s Bellevue Avenue robber baron row, where we’ve always suspected as much used to go on behind closed doors.

As things begin, we’re back in the Gilded Age, sitting along the sides of a ballroom or chatting, if we wish, with the costumed revelers before a ball or with the servants. A butler at the entrance tries to look dignified as he greets guests, but his formal attire is undone by the bunny ears he has been ordered to wear. More serious than this complaint, many more dissatisfactions in the mansion emerge as the evening proceeds.

The mystery itself, and our attempt at unraveling it, takes only as long as a Perry Mason rerun. Before that hour, after the introduction of our hosts and the other costumed characters, there is a half-hour of another sort of participation dancing. Volunteers line up for a Victorian version of a contra dance. Soon a free-for-all polka provides an additional mystery: how all the stumbling couples aren’t littering the dance floor with more bodies than that of the eventual victim.

The ball hosts and guests make a delicious recipe for murder. We are back when this is the summer home of Mrs. William Backhouse Astor Jr., a prime creator of New York’s first social register and reputedly the arbiter of social prominence in America. She is on the continent at the moment, so our hostess is her daughter-in-law Ava (C.C. Ice), to whom Mrs. Astor is considering handing down her crown as queen of blueblood society. Ava is dressed as Marie Antoinette, and her husband, Jack (Taige Jenson), is Louis XVI and imperious enough for us to question his marital loyalty.

Without divulging who gets killed, I can list the rest of the half-dozen upper crust who are assembled here with the four muttering servants. Carrie (Anne Thompson) is dressed in red and gold as a harlequin, but she has little to joke about. Her southerner husband Orme (Chris Smith), fittingly dressed as a pirate, is not only a gambler but is a bad one, to such an extent that she can’t afford fruit juice instead of tap water at breakfast. Dressed as Aphrodite, Grace (Morgen Balletto) was a spurned lover of Jack, though she shrugs off the matter.

Since the servants were in the easiest positions to poison the victim, they are prime suspects. (We may learn in grilling the characters, however, that above-the-stairs women applied arsenic to blemishes and men took it for a buzz, so everyone had access to the "weapon.") The butler (Patrick Grimes) was recently fired, though he is staying on until a replacement can be hired. Footman Marti (Jeremy Coffman) has been in prison, and if we’re inquisitive enough we may learn of his involvement in an unsavory sexual scandal. The brother of housemaid Ella (Nikki Lawrence) was run over by the carriage of one of the Astors. Resentments fill the air like at a union hall after a Republican election victory.

Early publicity for the murder mystery said that there would be three experienced detectives to accompany the audience as they wandered about, presumably in case we don’t want to ask questions. But participants, forewarned about their responsibilities, have gotten into the game and eliminated that need. When one suspect was being grilled, an audience member wandered in and announced, "I hear that you’ve developed a little twinkle in your eye for . . . " and related what she’d just learned in another room.

All the actors seem to be having a grand time, too, improvising their lines when being questioned and getting into their characters’ plights. Obviously, the victim isn’t one of the servants, so I can mention how smug with mischief Lindsay Becker was as Carrie’s larcenous maid. And as the butler, Grimes may have lost his bunny ears but not his composure as an audience member grinned and suggested he was the killer. "This isn’t something to jest about!" he exclaimed.

Murder at Bal Masque is a fun evening, especially for those of us who have always wanted to step into a play and give the characters a piece of our mind. Here’s a hint: It’s not Col. Mustard.