NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Laugh­ter and sus­pense took over the Samaan Es­tate in St Clair on Au­gust 8 as Teatro Journee host­ed Served—its first din­ner the­atre—tak­ing guests on a mys­tery-filled im­mer­sive the­atre ex­pe­ri­ence.

The es­tate was trans­formed in­to Ser­anet­ti Ital­ian Bistro, serv­ing a fu­sion of Caribbean and Ital­ian cuisines. The menu in­clud­ed items such as is­land br­uschet­ta, mush­room risot­to, chick­en Pi­cas­so and more.

Once the ap­pe­tis­ers were out of the way, the show be­gan.

Writ­ten by Gabrielle Scott, Served chal­lenged guests to fig­ure out who al­leged­ly poi­soned a woman at her 50th birth­day par­ty.

Since the par­ty was a sur­prise, at­ten­dees got con­fet­ti to throw in­to the air when the woman of the night, Miss Ce­line, en­tered. The laugh­ter im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan when she in­ter­act­ed with mem­bers of the au­di­ence as if they were her life­long friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The oth­er in­vit­ed guests (ac­tors) sat at the head ta­ble and in­clud­ed her daugh­ter, boyfriend, friends, ex-boyfriend and spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er. As they drank wine through­out the night, Ce­line be­gan to stum­ble be­fore pass­ing out, and then the guests alert­ed the au­di­ence that she did not seem to be breath­ing. One of her friends, a med­ical doc­tor, con­clud­ed that she had died as she felt “no pulse.”

The restau­rant was then locked down as they con­clud­ed she had been poi­soned, with the main ta­ble be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed.

At­ten­dees were giv­en pages to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial sus­pects and ac­com­plices and to in­clude any ad­di­tion­al notes they may have. Some ta­bles got in­to se­ri­ous, lengthy dis­cus­sions filled with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as they turned in­to tem­po­rary de­tec­tives. Some even boast­ed that they watch mys­tery-themed shows of­ten, so fig­ur­ing it out would be easy for them. “There are too many pos­si­bil­i­ties!” one per­son shout­ed. Oth­ers took so many notes that they re­sort­ed to their own notepads for ad­di­tion­al space.

Rev­e­la­tions came forth as the night pro­ceed­ed, with some at the head ta­ble say­ing they saw Ce­line as a mon­ey-mak­ing ma­chine as she owned the bistro.

But to the sur­prise of many, she waltzed back out to the main area, very much alive and well some time lat­er. She asked the au­di­ence, “So who do you think the main sus­pect is?” as many be­gan rat­tling off lists. “Well, it’s me,” she re­vealed. She faked her death to see who was be­ing gen­uine in her life, rather than us­ing her for mon­ey or po­ten­tial gains.

A few peo­ple got it right and won dif­fer­ent gift vouch­ers. But many ex­pressed their joy at see­ing im­mer­sive the­atre re­turn and said they hoped to see more of it mov­ing for­ward.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the event, Scott, the play­wright, said it was great to see how much fun the at­ten­dees had through­out the play. “The peo­ple at my ta­ble were re­al­ly dis­sect­ing the de­tails of the char­ac­ters and ob­serv­ing not just the ver­bal but the non-ver­bal as­pects, and it was so fas­ci­nat­ing. We, as a peo­ple, are so ma­co­cious,” she said as she laughed. “And how do we take that ma­co­cious na­ture and bring it in­to an im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ty build­ing as we dis­cuss is­sues.”

A per­cent­age of the prof­its from the sold-out show will be do­nat­ed to the DENT Foun­da­tion—a girls’ em­pow­er­ment group—to as­sist with ac­cess to ther­a­py/psy­choso­cial ser­vices.