“It was a dark and stormy night….”

Ok, not really, but that’s something you’d think a story like this would start off by saying.

As five people gather in Mr. Whittaker’s mansion for a party, something goes terribly wrong. Mr. Whittaker is poisoned and dies. That’s when Agent Stark steps up and involves us, as an audience, to question the characters and figure out who killed Mr. Whittaker.

The Tin Man starts off as something of a Clue-like caper. You have a group of 1930’s characters who all have the motive to kill the dead man, but instead of moving around a game board we were told to walk around The Half-Moon and question the characters ourselves. Then the people at your table, as well as yourself, have to put together the info you have gathered and figure who did it and the motive.

Was it the widow of the rich millionaire? Or maybe the husband and wife sleuth hired to find a prized possession of the millionaire? Or was it the adventurer that wanted some land of Whittaker’s to dig up some old dinosaur bones?

All in all, ‘The Tin Man’ was a fun night. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect walking in. I wasn’t even sure what was going to happen. The tables were set up all nice, the food was ready, and the actors walked around and talked with the rest of the audience in character. It was also pretty funny in places. Again, like Clue, the characters are quirky, the dialogue was cheesy (the good kind), and there was lots of mystery involved.

The portion that impressed me the most was the actors, they stayed in character the entire time. Before the dinner started, they walked around through the tables and introduced themselves as the characters. As the mystery got underway, we had to walk around the Half Moon and ask the characters questions about what they thought of the murder and who they thought did it. They never broke character once and did a fantastic job making each character their own. Only once the mystery was solved and the dinner wrapped up was when I saw them act out of character.

It was a fun evening and Red Herring Productions killed it. The actors were all very good and the mystery was one you’ve probably heard of a thousand times, but it was still a blast to see it all played out. At the end, the man playing Agent Stark…..Naked (No I’m not kidding) told us that they’ve been going to ACC for years.

Well, if that’s the case, I would highly recommend that you attend the next dinner theater event in the Spring of 2017. The audience involvement, the actor’s dedication, and the good food made it a fun evening and 100% worth staying the extra few hours after my last class had ended.