Top Ten Murder Mystery Events - 5 to 1

Well, it’s only been a year (at least!) since I published our blog of our top ten murder mystery events from 10 to 6… I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with baited breath to read our 5 to 1!! (Or, like me, you totally forgot about it - nothing like a global pandemic to throw you off your blog game!)

Fyvie Castle all set up and ready for a Murder Mystery - what a setting!

5. Fyvie Castle - The Kilted Killing

It’s no secret. We love performing at Fyvie Castle. We’re really hoping to get back to perform there again soon. Watch this space! Our second performance there was in January 2018, when we did The Kilted Killing for Burns Night. As usual, Celine and her team made us feel really welcome and did a fab job of helping it to be a huge success. We were really busy at the beginning of that year - we had five Murder Mysteries in the space of 17 days in February - and we were all trying to keep track of who we were and which scenario we were doing on any given day. The week of our event at Fyvie, I received a message from one of our actors saying he was really unwell and unlikely to be able to perform that Saturday. Small panic between myself and Dan trying to figure out who we could ask to fill in at such short notice. None of our other available actors really fitted the part so the only option was for us to look for someone new. Not an easy task - ‘Hey, do you want to come do your first Murder Mystery with us? Yeah? It’s in three days’ time. Hello…?’

Enter Stewart. Now a very familiar face at RHP and a real hero in this story. He agreed to join us at Fyvie, did an amazing job of the part (not strictly sticking to the script, but it turns out he likes to improvise anyway - no performance since has been the same!! Good thing we’re not precious about what we write!) and even saved one of our other actors when he had a mind blank during his final monologue. The evening was great fun and we owe a lot of that to Stewart. He saved us another time when Dan was unexpectedly taken into hospital and we had a Murder Mystery the next evening at Drum Castle. Stewart had performed the same scenario during the week at a private event, but in a different part. However, he dutifully learned another character’s story (notice I didn’t say lines…) and went on as someone completely different the next night. Star.

While I’m on the subject, there have been a fair number of actors who have jumped in at the last second to save us. So thank you! Particularly Rosalind, who on her first performance with us, was drafted in with THREE HOURS notice. You guys are all pretty special.

I mean, as venues go, this has to be one of the most unique!

4. Caledonian Railway - Murder at the Manor

Yeah you read that correctly. Railway. 2019 saw us perform for the first time on a moving train. I kid you not. It was brilliant. Just. So. Cool. We started with a private function in June and then a public event in August. The public event in particular was tricky because the guests were split into two different carriages, meaning any short performance pieces we did couldn’t play out as normal because not everyone would be able to see or hear them. However, we managed to adapt the script somewhat in order to cater for this very unique venue and we had an absolute blast.

At the end of the evening, we took the audience across the road in Brechin to a local church hall to reveal the truth via individual monologues from each character. Our pal Stewart was in fact one of the murderers this time and he announced this at the beginning of his speech. As he was about to launch into the rest of his monologue, an elderly gentlemen in the second row stood up and said ‘Nothing personal, I just need the toilet’ and proceeded to climb the stairs past us and out of the room. The whole place burst out laughing, actors included, and Stewart loudly remarked ‘Well, that’s the Oscar down the swanny!’ We tried our best to compose ourselves and finish the performance properly, but one squeak of a laugh from audience or actor just set everyone off again!

Last year we were in the process of writing a brand new scenario ‘Chatanooga Choo-Choo: Murder on the Brechin Express’ - a wartime theme that we were very much looking forward to performing. Of course, this has been put on hold for now, but here’s hoping we’ll be back soon and we can try out this brand new script!

Stripper Craig meeting his end in a very dramatic way in the Billiard Room at Durn House.

3. Durn House - Til Death Do Us Part

This one definitely deserves to be top three. Having performed a few times for Durn House, I received an email from the events manager, Louise, saying she had a couple who were getting married at the hotel and were ‘looking to do something different’. So she had said, ‘have you thought about a Murder Mystery?’

They had not, but it got them thinking. So I met with them and described how it would work and I could see them getting more and more excited by the idea. So they went for it. But insisted that none of their guests knew about it. Only the bride (Laura), groom (Aiden) and the bride’s mother were to know. Meaning we had a ‘singing waiter’ of sorts on our hands. Oh and also, ‘both of our dads have heart conditions.’ Right, so no screaming ‘Murder!’ then…

We wrote a scenario that cast all of our actors as members of staff. We had a manager (Dan), a grumpy, very pregnant receptionist (I was reeeeally pregnant), a cocktail waitress (Leigh - who worked twice as hard as the rest of us, collecting glasses and running around all over the place all day!), a photographer’s assistant (Callum - he actually took some good photos too!), and a two person band, providing background music (Rachael and Iain).

Dan MC’d their speeches while the rest of us were looking at each other like ‘are we actually going to do this?!’ and once the guests were seated for dinner, Craig appeared as if from nowhere dressed as a stripper. Yup, a stripper. Laura’s sister, Joanne, was celebrating her birthday on the same day, so Craig hauled her up, gave her a bright blue cocktail then started to strip for her… I quickly (I was told by Craig to be VERY QUICK) burst in as his fiancee and started having a real go at him, as if I had no idea he was a stripper. Cue a big old argument and Craig storming off downstairs. Dan apologised profusely to Laura and Aiden (whose poker faces were impressive, by the way!) and rushed off after him. Iain and Rachael decided to lighten the mood by singing Happy Birthday to Joanne, only to be interrupted by Dan who announced ‘The stripper is dead. Ladies and gentlemen, your evening’s entertainment is a Murder Mystery!’

The guests were absolutely brilliant. Having had a murder mystery sprung on them, the fully embraced it and had a brilliant night - as did we. In our discussions with Laura and Aiden ahead of the day, they mentioned that they hadn’t booked a band for the evening - we were their entertainment and they were going to just plug an iPod in for music afterwards. So I offered to book a cast who could also sing a couple of songs to start off their party after we were done. So we did!

Honestly, we couldn’t have had more fun that night. It was the most unique wedding I’ve ever been to. And thanks to current restrictions, this scenario (one I wasn’t sure we’d get to do again) has made a comeback! So, if you’re getting married and are looking for some kind of entertainment to replace the traditional dance/disco, please do give me a shout!

My poor mum making yet more costumes for us - this time she only just saw over the top of a skirt that fit Rachael perfectly!

2. Aberdeen Central Library - On Borrowed Time

Another specially written scenario, this one for Aberdeen Central Library. We met with Dallas at the library and he showed us round, explaining where we would seat the guests, how they would serve their food, where we would hide and where we could take groups to look for evidence etc. As you can imagine, the building is full of little nooks and crannies that we wanted to use in our new scenario - far too many to use in just one. Some of the places we did end up using were an amazing board room, a dumb waiter lift thing that we hid a (fake) gun inside and the rolling stacks of books in the basement that we put a severed arm in between to make it look like someone had been crushed. Gruesome, but it looked amazing!

But, the highlight of that night was on the stairs. There are four flights in the building and it’s a very impressive spiral staircase. Absolutely perfect for a body drop. So that’s what we did. We gathered the guests on the stairs, pretending we wanted a photograph of everyone and as soon as the photographer counted down and said ‘smile’, we dropped a ‘body’ from above them and it landed on the stairs below. We quickly removed the body double and Rachael lay in its place, to make it look like she’d plummeted to her death. It was so effective and brilliant and hilarious! Dallas (who ended up as the photographer) even filmed it, so we have the video to watch back whenever we like! I might go do that now, actually…

Gavin being very dramatic (shock!) at His Majesty’s Theatre.

1. His Majesty’s Theatre - Amateur Dramatics

A murder mystery at His Majesty’s Theatre. What an absolute treat! Right next to Aberdeen Central Library, this building holds a lot of great memories for almost all of our RHP actors, so when I said we’d been booked to perform there, I think I could have cast it three times over.

Guests were eating in the 1906 restaurant and we were given almost total access to the theatre to plant evidence and kill off suspects - it was so much fun! We wrote a scenario called ‘Amateur Dramatics: from Stage to Scream’ and it involved a fake local am dram group who were putting on a special concert to welcome back an ex member who had found fame and fortune without them. Needless to say, this special guest never made it to the event. Usually, the dead body at the start of the night is never present (I’m not paying an actor to lie dead for 10 minutes and then go home!), but when I asked Mike to be our ‘dead guy’ and pose for a few photos for evidence etc, he said he wanted to come along and pose dead too! In fairness, it was a pretty special venue and he ended up sticking around for a while to watch (hidden from guests, of course!)

The middle section saw another of our actors being killed off - poor Linny died mid song, in one of the boxes in the theatre. It was incredibly dramatic and remains one of the funniest moments in RHP Murder Mystery history. When we rehearsed the scene in situ that afternoon, I was crying with laughter, while trying to sing! I honestly have no idea how I managed to keep a straight face on the night - the whole sequence was hilarious from start to finish.

All in all, the venue was amazing, the actors outdid themselves, the guests had a ball and we felt incredibly privileged to be able to perform one of our murder mysteries in a theatre that means so much to us.

And that’s it! Our top ten murder mystery events so far. We can only hope that we’ll be back to regular performances really soon - we miss them so much!

Here’s a wee bonus for you - the video evidence of our body drop at the Aberdeen Central Library! Enjoy!