Wheel of Misfortune is Stefanie Austin’s latest murder-mystery dinner theatre play written for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Directed by Henry Morello, the individual performances were often quite good, with some excellent gags, but (due, in my opinion, to forces beyond the cast or production team’s control) the overall performance lacked energy the night I saw it.

The show is set at The Quiz Whiz game show, where ratings are tanking because the obnoxious long-term winner Jed Stanley is so hated by audiences. His continued presence on the show threatens the job of producer Sherrie Horner, who uses her addiction to Mad Ox energy drink to cope with the constant pressure. It also comes the threaten the roles of the host and co-host Benny Barnes and Janna Gray. Benny—actually a British actor looking to leave his American heart-throb persona for more traditional theatre work—and his wife Janna—a former beauty pageant winner and now spokesperson for the beauty brand Glitter Us—are actually separated, but that’s a carefully guarded secret while they maintain their loving personas in public and on the show. Additionally, it’s revealed that Jeb either has been or begins blackmailing each of the stars. Alongside these problems, Benny is having an affair with Emma, the mousy and librarianish question writer, an affair that needs to be kept secret. Keeping everyone’s secrets is made even more difficult by the presence of Cody, the new writing intern who is obsessed with Benny and tasked by Sherrie with following Jeb to find out how he’s cheating. It’s also made harder by the often silent observations of Miller, a security guard hired by Pam, the network executive and Sherrie’s former friend. When Jeb ends up dead, it seems that everyone has a motive—and it’s up to the audience to help figure out who committed the crime.

The individual performances were excellent—I’ve worked with or seen on stage before many of the people in this production, so I’m not at all surprised by that. Some of the characters had specific gimmicks, which they were able to work extraordinarily well. For instance, Sherrie’s addiction to Mad Ox was a focal point of her character and Andrea Boito did an amazing job alternating between casual indifference or frustration when other characters continually mentioned that it causes stomach cancer. And one incredible bit was the increasing volume of Mad Ox she drank over the course of the show, moving from individual cans, to mixing it with coffee, to a large thermos, to a giant novelty mug, to coming out for the final scene with a can the size of a large Folgers coffee can hung on an IV rig and feeding directly into her veins.

Another really strong performance was by Kylie Rae Schultz, playing Janna Gray. As a kind of ditzy, superficial, former beauty queen, the role of Janna didn’t give Kylie a massive amount to work with to create character depth. Most of the gags revolved around references to Janna’s Glitter Us, and the inuendo with clitoris. But, when Kylie came around to the tables to answer audience questions, she created some interesting depth to the character by claiming to be much older than she appears—telling us that she won Miss American in 1979. These kinds of unique and unexpected details show Kylie’s skill at building on a character that could otherwise come across as pretty flat.

Speaking of making the most of a part that could fall flat, J. Lance Wilkinson brought incredible charisma to the role of Miller, a security guard whose dialogue mostly consists of saying, “negative” or that the answers to even the most basic questions are classified. Lance has a remarkable talent for taking these kinds of roles with limited speaking parts and nonetheless making them feel central to the show.

Despite some excellent performances, however, the show felt slow when I saw it, which is death for a comedy. I don’t think this was the fault of anyone in the cast or production team, but I think there were several contributing factors. First is that the audience was pretty low energy. This happens, and there’s not necessarily much that can be done about it. But there weren’t many big laughs from the audience, which, for a performer, can be really disheartening. There are also just challenges that come with Titan Hollow as a performance venue—things we ran into when I directed Do Not Resuscitate there as well. The bar at Mad Macintosh remains open during performances, with only a single wall separating the performance area from that venue, so the actors necessarily need to compete with that noise—which, of course, on the Saturday night when I went is going to be fairly loud—in addition to the noise and distraction of people eating and drinking for the dinner theatre. And because the space is so large, the lighting trees need to be placed pretty far away from the stage, which means the light from the LEDs Sock & Buskin owns is diffused by the time it gets to the stage, so the lighting isn’t as bright as one might ideally want, especially for something like a game show set up.