As a true crime aficionado, I can tell you that there are two major reasons why people murder: love and money.
In Who Killed Joan Crawford?, six men are dressed in drag as a character from a Crawford movie, and one by one they drop dead. As they try to figure out who the murderer is, each of them having their own motive doesn’t help.
I hadn’t been to a play at the intimate Island City Stage in a while, and it was a packed house over the weekend, even though the play had been out for a week by then. Sitting in the second row, we felt like we were in the living room with the actors; and I don’t mean that to say it was cramped. Even with small real estate to work with, somehow the stage team managed to create a cozy yet roomy cabin escape in 1993 upstate New York.
First, the wealthy Gene Harlow (no, not that one) walks into the home of his friend Trick Rogers, a fan of Crawford as indicated by the movie posters hanging from the walls. An actor himself, he’s got his three Emmys on display by the piano (or as a friend points out, daytime Emmys).
But Trick seems to be late to his own party. More guests arrive—therapist Stewart Fry, PR flack Harvey Goldberg, producer Leo Lawrence, and his younger boy toy David Hoch. They’ve brought gifts, pour martinis, get the lasagna in the oven, make snide remarks to one another about age, dating, and their careers, but they’re all wondering: where is the birthday boy?
Well, Gene finds him when he goes to hang up his fur coat in the closet—Trick is hanging by the neck, his, um, member in his hand, seemingly dead because of autoerotic asphyxiation. The group calls the cops, who conveniently can’t make it out there right away due to the weather. It all seems to be death by mischief, until a second character falls dead after he accidentally ingests a cranberry martini, which he’s allergic to.
Or was it an accident?
When a third friend is found dead, there’s no question that a murderer is among them. But who? As the finger-pointing continues, more is revealed about each of the characters and their relationships to one another, and why they would want one another dead.
(Matthew Tippins for Island City Stage)
At 75 minutes, Who Killed Joan Crawford? is a fast-paced murder mystery punctuated with witty one-liners that’ll entertain the Broadway set, varying levels of comfort in heels, and birthday gifts and a yellow rain jacket that seem benign until they’re not. While there were moments that the actors tripped over their lines, they were quickly forgotten as we moved from scene to scene, never able to guess what would happen next or what quips would come out of the characters’ mouths.
I’m no snitch, so I won’t tell you who the murderer is, but I will tease that that’s only one of two major twists in the last few minutes of the play that will take your breath away (no killing required).
Who Killed Joan Crawford? is running through Oct. 25 at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Highway in Wilton Manors. Visit islandcitystage.org
