By WESLIE STRATTON
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley High School Drama Department’s second annual showcase presented Mystery Theater on Wednesday, May 13 at the Ron Dalley Theater.
As emcees, Carlie Evans and Andrea Leavitt entertained audiences and announced performances throughout the evening. The duo provided comical riddles pulled from the “Fedora of Mystery.” One riddle included the question, “What room is useless for a ghost?” The answer: “A living room.”
Various performing arts groups took the stage during the event all with the common theme of mystery.
The evening began with the MVHS Jazz Band that performed the toe-tapping musical number “Buffalo Wings” featuring impressive student solos throughout the tune.
The Advanced Theater seniors performed a skit titled “A Crime Done in Rhyme.” It was much like it sounds. A narrator introduced a crime scene and provided third-person dialogue for the “who dun it” case also featuring a detective, murder victim and suspects who all spoke in witty rhyme.
The dance team juniors and seniors performed “Dragnet” with matching attire and broad smiles. The well choreographed dance was completed with perfection and drew loud applause from audience members.
Beginning Theater students enacted two skits “The Murder of Mrs. Brooks” and “Death Calls at Dinner.” The cast, made up mostly of juniors, acted out the mysteries complete with hilarious GEICO Auto Insurance and Snickers commercials.
The Advanced Theater Juniors performed “Adventures of the Thin Man: All American Menace” in which a young woman goes to a friend and light-heartedly asks for advice on how to kill a man. The friend refuses to help and is tasked with solving the mystery when the man in question turns up dead.
MVHS teachers performed a comical “Blame the Butler” skit based on a Mystery Dinner theme. At the dinner it is discovered that the lights go out each time lighting strikes during the current storm. Following that discovery someone is found dead each time the lights come back on; only the murderer strikes a second too soon, allowing all other dinner guests a visual on his attacks before the lights go out. The murderer, played by Dallas Larson, vehemently denies being the murderer regardless of the many eye-witnesses and the fact that he is always found with the murder weapon in hand. The murderer comically insists that the butler is the guilty man.
Next on the program, a comical male duo from the school’s Forensics team, performed “Superheroes”. The skit involved Mack Nelson and TC Twelker taking turns acting out popular superheroes and the struggles that they face.
The Advanced Theater Sophomores acted out “Romanian Uranium Mystery” which involved a murder conspiracy featuring an undercover agent, a washed up cheerleader, a dumb blond, a greedy business man, a conservative vegetarian and more. The comical tangle of misunderstanding and overwhelming desire for money and riches was expertly enacted.
Wrapping up the evening of mystery was a performance by the MVHS choir of the fitting tune “Ghostbusters” that featured character’s dressed as Ghostbusters and ghouls running up and down the isles of the theater.
