A Kerfuffle of a Caper at CAW

With family in town for the holidays, what could possibly be more apropos in theater than a family and friend fueled farcical fusion of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, the Clue board game, and popular British drama television series like Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs? 

That’s the premise behind WHODUNIT?, the first fully original new production by Kerfuffle Theatre. Kerfuffle is marking its one-year anniversary, having premiered a scant 12 months ago with Peter Spam, founding director Emma-Jane Huerta’s update of another mash-up show she first created years ago for her Upstarts Youth Theatre. Huerta set WHODUNIT? in the English countryside at Christmas in 1945, when young couple Nigel and Caroline Plum are entertaining friends and family at their home known as Mediocre Manor. The intrigue intensifies when everybody gets snowed in. 

“I took all those Agatha Christie tropes and stereotypes, and mashed them up with the characters from Clue. We’re also parodying the dramatic stereotypes that we see on all those PBS period dramas,” Huerta explained. “Put those three things together with a flavor of the old art of pantomime – which is different in England than here – and that’s a Kerfuffle theater show. It’s a righteous romp for this time of the year.”

Everyone in WHODUNIT? is named for a character in the board game, and the writer-director said they do indeed mirror the personalities of their namesakes. 

“The Reverend Green is the naïve, well-meaning, but hopeless vicar. And there’s the blustery braggart Colonel Mustard and the femme fatale Miss Scarlet,” Huerta said. “But the murder mystery is all my own.” 

Including skewering the class consciousness and sexism of the time period right after the end of World War II.

“People carry on in front of that butler as though he’s not even human, just blurting their utter secrets to each other,” Huerta said. “We parody the sexism and chauvinism of the era, and there are allusions to xenophobia, because our uninvited guest is actually a foreigner, which sends a tremor of terror through and amongst our characters because they’re still very frightened after the war.” 

“Pantomime” as it’s defined across the pond calls for oversized everything, including some of the props, Huerta said. 

“We have a lot of surprises, including a few outlandishly large things in this play, but for spoiler alert reasons I can’t tell you more than that,” she said. 

While Huerta chose the week between Christmas and New Year’s last year partly due to scheduling issues, the choice to produce the new play in that same time frame was deliberate, as is the move to the Community Arts Workshop, where Huerta has helped put together the Solstice parade floats and puppets every summer for years. 

“It’s a great time for audiences because people are around with not much else to do,” she said.

That goes for the actors, too. The cast includes experienced Montecito actor Clayton Barry, as well as other familiar names in Ali Javanbakht, the chief medical officer for Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics who also happens to perform regularly in improv shows, and longtime Rincon Broadcasting producer and news anchor Jim Sirianni, publicity/social media and ticketing manager at Center Stage. The comically energetic cast includes as well one of Huerta’s former Upstarts players, Emma Tracewell. 

“They’re bloody amazing actors,” she said. “This is theater in the wild – guerilla theater – which is a very different experience where all of the cast arrives with ideas and are very collaborative. Everybody works with me putting the whole thing together, from the scripts to the props to the costumes. They’re wearing their own shoes, because we are on a shoestring budget.” 

That approach hits home with Barry, who plays Professor Nigel Plum in the show – not long, it must be said, after portraying a seemingly brave and bloodthirsty Swiss mercenary who in fact just wants to survive and win the girl in Shaw’s biting romantic comedy/social satire Arms and the Man at SBCC this fall. 

“WHODUNIT? is just my cup of tea,” Barry said. “I love doing really goofy stuff, character roles, silly voices and things like that. It’s a wonderfully written piece. Emma-Jane has a great ear for exactly this type of farce.” 

Finding the social satire through silliness is catnip for Barry. Exploring the text also revealed the commentary on the social norms of the immediate post-war era, all cleverly couched in a murder mystery that he gets to work through in his, ahem, plum role as the professor. 

“It’s definitely my preferred entry point to those sorts of conversations,” he said. “In (a play) that’s styled as just something to laugh through you can get across some pretty heavy messaging without bringing the tone down.” 

Barry said he spent several evenings going over the lines in the script at home in Montecito with his famous father Jeff, the Hall of Fame pop songwriter. 

“We just laugh our heads off every time.”

Huerta said the entire ensemble has been hitting their marks in recent rehearsals, no mean feat given the challenges of the mashup format. “It’s a full story, just with lots of comedy running through it. We’re agonizing over tiny little moments just to make the joke land or the visual hit hard. I’m choreographing and conducting while I’m directing.” 

All the audience has to do is show up for the shows that take place December 28-31, although you might want to bring a cushion as the seating at CAW is folding chairs. 

Visit www.sbcaw.org/upcoming.