A group of individuals who seemingly do not know each other arrive at a mansion for dinner and are soon informed that their host has been found dead.
Just as abruptly, a member of the house staff drops dead before them.
Before long, the others realize “Something’s Afoot” as they sing their way through songs, twists and character development.
Director Jeremy Douylliez-Willis performed in a summer production of “Something’s Afoot” in 2011 as “Jeffrey.”
“I have loved the show ever since,” he said.
“Something’s Afoot,” set in the 1930s, was on Broadway briefly and was never afforded a cast album, which enables most shows to become more well known and memorialized.
“If you don’t have [a cast album], it’s easy to get lost,” Douylliez-Willis said. “So doing this show back in 2011 felt like we had uncovered this gem of theater. It was so funny and fresh, and even though it was a couple of decades old, it didn’t feel old.”
The show still felt funny and the music was fresh and relevant to the actors.
“ShenanArts, I think, is the perfect venue for it, because it’s got just enough of the right technical stack to pull off some of the more technical elements of the show,” he said.
The show choice is also timely given the recent mainstream interest in the murder mystery genre, including the film “Knives Out” and its sequel, and the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building.”
“You throw a rock, you hit a murder mystery these days,” Douylliez-Willis said. “So I felt like the time was really right to offer something like that on stage here at ShenanArts.”
He wants audience members to know the show is a loving parody that pokes fun and pays homage to the genre of murder mysteries.
“This is just laugh out loud funny,” he said.
As the show’s director, Douylliez-Willis said he becomes almost sad as the show goes on and more and more characters are lost to murder.
“When we sat down for our first read through, I told the cast: ‘This is a piece of theater with absolutely no ulterior motive but to have a good time,'” he said of what he hopes audience members take away from seeing the show.
The cast of “Something’s Afoot” is having “the time of their life” on stage.
“I hope people just walk away with a smile on their face feeling like they’ve a good bit of fun,” Douylliez-Willis said.
Douylliez-Willis, music director Jennifer Kirkland, lead actor Sandi Belcher and show producer Diana Black have met through previous community theater productions. Two years ago, along with a couple of other local actors, the group formed Shenandoah Cabaret, a performance group with the goal of raising funds for local youth to participate in theater.
“An evening of pure fun,” Kirkland said of “Something’s Afoot.” “I think all of us could use that right about now.”
The cast consists of only 10 actors onstage: six men and four women. Black said a production of an ensemble cast of adult actors has not been performed at ShenanArts since “Sunday in the Park with George” in 2019.
“This is such a literate show and you don’t have to leave your intellect at the door to have a good time,” Black said.
Kirkland said the show includes all character actors “so everybody shines.”
“At the heart of this is about character actors doing what they do best,” Black said.
“Something’s Afoot” will be performed at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 6, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 7, at 7 p.m. on April 12 and 13 and at 3 p.m. on April 14, 2024. Tickets are available online and at the door.
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Rebecca Barnabi
