Kari and Stephen Williamson have written a murder mystery party scripts, a genre which has become a periodic fundraiser for Sock & Busking Theatre Company. Unlike a typical play, which is fully scripted and generally involves minimal audience interaction, the murder mystery parties have relatively brief scripted scenes interspersed with longer periods of interaction between the characters and the audience. At some point, one of the characters is murdered, and a detective/cop arrives and asks the guests to help gather info to determine who the guilty party is. Last Night at Black Hollow was the Halloween 2025 party.

The specific storyline of Last Night revolved around a Halloween party thrown by Lacey Kingsley, a publicist for her businessman husband Brett, TikTok celebrity Brooklyn Starr, and her best friend and true crime podcaster Nina Lambert. Also in attendance are local luminaries like mayor Frank N. Stein (the N stands for Norbert), county coroner Dr. Edgar Graves, and Brett’s business associate Adam Carlisle—plus Prof. Eleanor Wilde, who has crashed the party. Prof. Wilde warns that if Brett goes through with his plans to demolish Black Hollow manor, he will be visited by “the curse,” a warning most of the guests shrug off. Mayor Stein opposes Brett’s plans for the demolition, but finds there’s nothing he can do to stop it, seemingly being thwarted by local corruption, despite his best efforts to run the town with integrity. Simultaneously, multiple stories of love and betrayal flourish among the small group. Brett and Brooklyn Starr (who may or may not be the daughter of Ringo Starr, depending on who you ask) are having an affair, while Carlisle is in unrequited love with Lacey. For his part, Dr. Graves basically just hangs out and is creepy and wise. When Brett is found dead under mysterious circumstances, a police officer arrives and leads an investigation in which the audience gather clues by talking with the characters to find motive, means, and opportunity.

Lacey attends the party as Cleopatra. Brett as a king. Nina as one of the Pink Ladies from Grease. Adam as an Egyptian. Mayor Stein as Frankenstein’s monster. Dr. Graves as the grim reaper. Starr as a black cat. And Prof. Wilde comes in a cloak—though it wouldn’t be difficult to see that as her normal clothing, given that she’s a professor of occult studies. And the police officer arrives dressed as a stripping police officer, having been called away from a different Halloween party.

Having acted in a Sock & Buskin murder mystery party, I have a sense of how difficult it can be to keep in character and think on one’s feet when interacting with audience members—especially those like me who try to throw curveballs to trip actors up. For Last Night, the actors did fantastic at navigating the challenges of our questions and staying in character—apart from a couple brief moments where Luke Streich (playing mayor Stein) broke character to talk to me just as a friend. One challenge with these types of performances is that different actors say different things, then audience members bring them up to other characters. For instance, I believe it was Brett (played by Jack Donahue, whom I’m currently directing in another S&B play coming up mid-Nov.) who first told me Starr’s grandfather was Ringo, then that was confirmed by mayor Stein, but denied by Brookyln herself (played by Kylie Rae Schultz), who told me that Adam Carlisle’s (played by Ryan Gartland) grandmother is Belinda Carlisle, which he confirmed. I don’t know how many of these rumors were determined in advance—I’m sure at least some were—but the cast definitely did an excellent job playing with rumors to help create uncertainty.

Another element of these performances is creating plausible suspicion across the board—everyone must have a motive for the murder so that the audience needs to put all the clues together. And this is done not only through the performance choices and scripted/semi-scripted character roles, but through “clues” distributed around the performance space. The clues tend to be things like newspaper articles, text conversations, emails, handwritten notes, etc. But there are also direct performance choices meant to create or divert suspicion. For instance, at one point, mayor Stein handed Brett a drink right in front of me—a clear clue that he might be poisoning Brett, especially given the mayor’s intense dislike of Brett. And throughout the evening, performers briefly left the space, opening potential suspicion that they might be off doing the murder.

I also want to give a special shoutout to Daniel Skiles for his Dr. Edgar Graves. He consistently freaked Andi (my partner) out every time she saw him. With the black death’s robe, sickle, and white painted face, he was definitely creepy. But he also knew (or plausibly bluffed knowing) quite a bit about poisons, toxins, and venoms. At one point after the murder, I asked him whether he could be sure it was murder, and he raised the possibility that it could be a black widow bite, to which I asked whether it could potentially be a brown recluse bite, and Daniel explained how the symptoms and signs of black widow venom are totally different from those of brown recluse venom. I have know idea whether that’ something Daniel knows (which wouldn’t surprise me, given how much fascinating and bizarre stuff he has in his head) or whether he just bluffed me extremely well.