Is It Possible To See A Hilarious But Thrilling Murder Mystery? You Can At The Blyth Festival

by Bob Montgomery

Resort to Murder opens at the Blyth Festival on Friday, July 26th.

Blyth Festival Artistic Director, Gil Garratt, says the play was written by Birgitte Solem who worked with him on the creation of the Pigeon King. During that time he learned that Birgitte had spent the better part of a decade doing murder mystery at a dinner theatre in Ottawa, where the actors didn't know what they were doing or what role they would be playing until about half an hour before they had to do it. Thus her training for murder mystery.

In Resort to Murder, Birgette has created a murder mystery that is very funny and also good and scary. It's about a young couple that inherits a mansion on Lake Huron and they're trying to decide what to do with it. She wants to turn it into a wellness spa retreat and he wants to turn it into a murder-mystery escape room. They reach a compromise and he sets up a murder-mystery escape room in the attic. On the night before they're going to open it to the general public, they invite all of the staff into this escape room. They close and lock the door and start the game. A Huron County thunderstorm causes the power goes off and when the lights come back on, someone's dead. 

The rest of the people in the room are left to figure out, first who did it and second, how do they get out of there. Unless they can solve the escape room, they're not going to be able to get the code to unlock the door. Garratt says the result is very funny, everybody's got a motive, everybody's got an alibi and all in all, it's just a lot of fun. 

Resort to Murder opens at the Blyth Festival on Friday, July 26th.

Photo courtesy of the Blyth Festival