Mystery Theaters on the Way

The Murder Mystery Theatre--a Los Angeles-based organization that has been in San Diego for one year--will begin a weekly interactive murder mystery dinner series on Friday nights at the Horton Grand Hotel beginning Aug. 10. It plans to rotate scripts monthly.

The group will continue what to now has been a monthly staging of murder mysteries on trains and cruises in San Diego, in which the patrons play a larger part in the action. The actors are trained to blend in with the guests. A patron doesn’t know if the stranger he struck up a conversation with between the courses is another guest or a potential murder victim or suspect. The action has the effect of exploding around you.

People may even look at you suspiciously, trying to gauge whether you are one of the planted actors.

The shows will start with cocktails at 7 p.m. and continue through dinner for up to 110 patrons a night.

Opening in September will be “The KPUG Talk Radio Murder Mystery” at the Town and Country Hotel in Mission Valley. The hotel is converting its Abilene saloon into a 170-seat theater for an open-ended run of the show.

Written by San Diegans Bill McGaw, Hall Sprague and Garry Shirts, the show was a hit when it premiered at the Coronado Playhouse in January. Audiences are ushered into a simulated remote broadcast of a radio station and are given a chance to perform, be interviewed and help solve a crime. There are five endings, depending on the audience.

The show will run Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. It is not a dinner show, but the seating is cabaret style, and waitresses and waiters serve drinks throughout the evening.