Promotional poster for Last Night at Black Hollow 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 …
Continue reading Kari and Stephen Williamson’s Last Night at Black Hollow—24 Oct. 2025
Night Watch poster I’ve seen a good amount of professional theatre and university theatre, and both seen and been involved in a good number of community theatre productions. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show as well executed as Sock & Buskin’s production of Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch, directed by Stefanie Austin. …
Continue reading Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch—20 Sept. 2025
And Then There Were None program This weekend I saw the State College Community Theatre’s (SCCT) production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None directed by Eli Beers-Altman and assistant directed by Joe Appel. Our story begins with eight very different house guests, eccentric in their own ways, arriving at an isolated mansion situated …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – 13 Sept. 2025 by Andi Stout
I saw Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution roughly one year ago in the London County Hall, under the direction of Lucy Bailey both times. My previous review (which includes a plot summary in the second paragraph) is available here: https://phillipzapkin.com/2024/06/13/agatha-christies-witness-for-the-prosecution-12-june-2024/. It’s interesting to see a trial play twice, because you no longer have to …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—1 July 2025
Slain at the Speakeasy program Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy is a full-length play developed out of an original semi-scripted murder mystery party script by Stefanie Austin, so this is definitely an in-house project for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Although this version was based on the original, the full-length production—directed …
Continue reading Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy—23 Mar. 2025
The playbill for the Cutthroat Christmas staged reading This performance was a staged reading of Kari Williamson and Stefanie Austin’s play Cutthroat Christmas, as a kind of prelude to the upcoming sequel Cutthroat Christmas: Deadly Deals. This original script had received a full production two years ago, and this read through was basically done so …
Continue reading Kari Williamson and Stefanie Austin’s Cutthroat Christmas—4 Dec. 2024
State College Community Theatre’s production of Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, directed by Kerry Clancy-Burns, had some strengths as a production, though overall it was not the best show I’ve ever seen. There were many positive aspects—especially individual performances, most of which were excellent. But there were some technical issues that undercut the show. To …
Continue reading Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot—13 Sept. 2024
Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap To get the standard info out of the way first, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is famous for having the world’s longest single production run, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1952 and playing uninterrupted (despite a move next door to its current location at St. Martin’s Theatre in 1974—though they never …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap—20 June 2024
Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution Agatha Christie is, as many people know, one of the most popular and beloved British authors. Theatrically, her most famous piece is The Mousetrap (review forthcoming after I see it next week), but an ongoing production, begun in 2017, is her play Witness for the Prosecution, running at London …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—12 June 2024
Sock & Buskin’s The Will to Kill was a new one for my partner and I, because we had never attended one of the company’s murder mystery parties before. Part performance, part cocktail party, part whodunit, the murder mystery party is an interesting, interactive, hybrid genre. Unlike most theatre, the majority of the action is carried out between “audience members” and the performers, rather than amongst performers themselves.
Phillip Zapkin 