Murder for Two
Winter Park Playhouse • Winter Park, Florida
Book & Lyrics by Kellen Blair
Book & Music by Joe Kinosian
Directed by Roy Alan
Musical Direction by Chris Leavy
Featuring Kevin Kelly and Jared Troilo
Carl F. Gauze
After a twenty-year run, the Winter Park Playhouse is going strong, and tonight takes a well-deserved retrospective of their oeuvre. Tonight in Murder for Two, a minimalist cast attempts to find the murderer in a remote and ramshackle mansion (which is the sort of real estate corpses prefer). If you’re this rich, who wants to die with the hoi polloi? The first (and only) cop who responds is the young and eager Marcus (Troilo). He sees this death as his chance for advancement. And as someone more famous than I said, every man’s death solves another man’s problem. Tacitus, I think. I always confuse those old Greeks and Romans. Anyway, motives and suspects fill the air, and while we won’t know the killer’s identity until later, I have a pretty good idea that whoever it is, Kevin Kelly will be playing them.
Like any good comedy murder, it’s not the murderer, it’s the method that entertains us. Everyone has opportunity and motive, and nearly all of them are pretty silly. Kelly whizzes about the space, acting his range of characters with enough distinctness to keep them straight, but at some points you might slip and think: “Wait, who is that again?” But it’s not a long pause, now you’re three gags behind. Mr. Troilo seems ambitious and without guile. He’s Kelly’s foil for most of the evening, but he’s as close as anyone to being the straight man tonight. Off in the corner we hear but don’t see the musicians, and if you’ve been to this comic rodeo previously, the band is exactly who you might expect. This is a glorious kickoff to this 20th anniversary, and a ton of fun.
