Whodunit? Tartan High theater wants your help to find out

In the courts, suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty. Not so at Oakdale's Tartan High School, where anybody and everybody attending this weekend's murder mystery dinner theater will be the object of suspicion.

A cast of nine will star in "Murder at the Rutherford House," but when bullets fly and a corpse is found even an audience member could be held culpable, adding a bit of intrigue to the evening.

"Even our guests could be a suspect," said Ryan DeLaCroix, the school's theater director. "Everybody is a suspect until proven innocent. It will be like [the game] Clue on stage."

Tartan is one of only a handful of high schools that present a "true dinner theater" where patrons eat while the show goes on around them, said DeLaCroix, who is in his third year at the school at 828 Greenway Av. N.

As the play unfolds, guests have been invited to a party to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Lord Rutherford. The party, thrown by Lady Rutherford at her home, has been an annual occasion as required by the lord's will. Only this year, after the reading aloud of his will, the lord's booty will be distributed. As guests mingle over cocktails, a shot is fired, a body is found and an investigator arrives and begins asking questions and speculating on who might be the culprit.

The drama, written by Tom Chiodo and Peter DePietro, will unfold on the Tartan High School stage, where as many as 80 guests will put their sleuthing skills to work as they eat a chicken dinner. The audience will be allowed to ask the cast questions in the attempt to solve the whodunit, DeLaCroix said.

"They can bribe them, too," said DeLaCroix, who noted showgoers will be given play money to use.

"We don't throw the goods out right away," DeLaCroix said. "You have your suspicions, but that is why the question-and-answer session is so important. That will give you more to base your answer on."

This is the second year Tartan Theater has offered a dinner theater. Last spring the school presented "Boardwalk Melody Hours Murders."

"It was super popular," he said. "The kids wanted to do it again, so I made it part of the annual season."

While many elements of the theater are similar to staging a drama or musical -- character development, scene setting, costumes -- the dinner theater contains spontaneity and challenges actors to think quickly on their feet.

"We have a character that could be a man or a woman, and that is likely to get asked," DeLaCroix said. "We do a lot of improv practice to get them into the mode of thinking on their feet, because you never know what you will get asked."