BY Brian Caws, Ken MacDougall, and Jean Daigle
Directed by Jean Daigle
A Mysteriously Yours Presentation at 2026 Yonge Street
Open run

    Mysteriously Yours knows that its entertainment formula is a winning one with the dinner theatre set. It’s an interactive theatre formula in which performers in full costume mingle with the crowd that has just finished its cocktails, starters and main courses, and is anticipating a delectable dessert (whipped up by executive chef Therese de Grace, who is responsible for the elegant three-course meal). Mysteriously Yours is wont to link its mystery tale to something in the news, and this time it’s television’s Dancing With The Stars, a competition that borders on cruel public exposure, though the competitors seem to be willing to be cruelly exposed to the three judges’ range of international irony—American, British, and Italian. Of course, the only way anyone gets killed is through critical disfavour, though in the Mysteriously Yours show, one of the contestants (a Wayne Newton parody by the name of Shayne Newton, replete with vulgar jewelry and a pompadour that is a veritable phallic symbol) disappears after his terpsichorean riot only to be reported dead in his dressing room.

So who could have done the deadly deed and why? Could it be Bruno Tarantella (Laurence Prance), the fulsome Italian judge, who misses the old days of Astaire, Rogers, and Kelly, and who couldn’t stand Shayne? Or could it be Ryan Seafoam (Mark Candler), radio disc jockey and talk show host, of questionable sexual taste though much older than his t.v. model (Ryan Seacrest) and very much at sea in his mambo? Or, perhaps, it’s Mary Kate Lohanspears (Stephanie West), an empty-headed wannabe star and neurotic hybrid of those dumbed down pop stars she’s named after? She admits to having once driven over a photographer’s foot after having one too many Red Bulls—an act that cost her an hour and a half in jail, which was longer than any of her marriages. How about Bolshoi ballerina Tatiana Imasonova (Nicole Hapke), she of the long legs and emphatic disdain, who dances to win at all costs? There’s also the real possibility that the show’s host, Jimmy Kibble (Ken MacDougall), could be the guilty party because he feared being bumped as host by Shayne.

   A detective named Tony Gandolfony shows up—which is really Jean Daigle after a costume and accent change. He’s traded in his Shayne Newton pompadour and Las Vegas finery for a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and a stogie, and speaks a bit like James Gandolfini of The Sopranos—but just a bit. He simply adds to the fun by pretending to be a celebrity judge who executes his own hilarious Riverdance. He also provides us with the opportunity of second-guessing his sleuthing over dessert—a choice of lemon raspberry mousse with a candied lemon zest or butterscotch apricot torta in a pool of drunken sauce or dark chocolate truffle cake or, for those with de luxe taste, frozen milk chocolate bombe in a pool of tart berry coulis with seasonal fruit jewels and lashings of ivory chocolate.

   Solving the crime is fun, after all the hamming and mugging by the performers and the load of bad puns and jokes (a chicken dance is called “poultry in motion”), and is part of the popular interactive formula first developed by producers Brian and Lili Caws, and one that seems destined to last. You could even get to be one of the dance judges or, perhaps, even, unsuspectingly, one of the suspects, depending on the workings of Tony’s peculiar mind. There are no singers this time in the show, but you will leave laughing.

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