There is a large group of semi-well dressed students lined up at the foot of three steaming, linen covered tables. The lights are low. Voices in strange and foreign accents rise out of the solemn conversational din of the hungry students ready to feast on spinach fettuccini and meatballs, large vats of iced tea and lemonade off to the side.
There is a palpable sense of suspense and intrigue in the room. “While the funeral meats did coldly furnish the marriage tables,” what seemed like a celebration or faculty dinner of some sort has turned into a mystery someone has been murdered.
Pepi, a humble restaurant owner, known all over Little Italy for his antipasto and saltimbocca ?Ê la Romana, was shot dead last night in his restaurant.
The diners are here to figure out who killed him. Six microphones stand at the opposite end of the room, divided by a podium. People heap their plates with pasta, fill their cups and sit down at smaller tables.
This was not some bizarre show trail the patrons of the famous Pepi’s restauraunt charged to find out who murdered the man. It is “UVM’s first ever live game of Clue,” Caterina Goes, coordinator for UVM Program Board variety committee and a junior music major, said.
But there is no Colonial Mustard here, nor are there any candlesticks (fire hazard). Rather, there are six actors, making their way around the room, sitting at various tables, speaking to the patrons about their relationship with the deceased.
They are Rocco Scarfazzi, Tara Misu, Mama Rosa, Marco Roni, Angel Roni and Bo Jalais. All actors volunteered and worked on their characters since earlier that day. The event was put on by the UVM Program Board’s Variety Committee in conjunction with Thomas Ball Entertainment, a corporate entertainment company that goes to colleges, weddings and the like, offering a host of parlor games for any event.
So how does a live game of Clue work, you ask?
Folded sheets of paper sat like menus on every table. Inside, however, were “Suspect Profiles” each of the characters and their relationship to the deceased.
Rocco is Pepi’s twin brother and is into some shady business.
Tara is Pepi’s fianc?©e, Mama Rosa is his widow and Marco is their son who works in the restaurant and dreamed of becoming a soccer player.
Angel is their daughter and Bo Jalais is Rocco’s distant cousin and a manager of his vineyards. Throughout the meal “clues” are dropped on every table like, “Mama Rosa ismore than just a little fond of Rocco” and “Angel and Pepi fought bitterly over her love affair with Bo.”
It is then up to the audience to decipher the clues, ask questions to actors and try to figure out who killed Pepi. The characters fought on stage, falling in and out of their Italian accents and at times it began to seem less like a dignified Italian family and more like an episode of “Jerry Springer.”
Long story short, Bo did it.
