It must be Halloween with all the ghosts around here.  But in February?  Nope.  It’s actually the world premiere of the seventeenth Master Mystery Production and the first show of the 2018 season–The Last Chapter.  Bringing mystery with a literary twist, we turned to the legends in the world of writing to celebrate the art and craft of the written word.  With one of the world’s most famous unsolved mysteries as the background for a more twisted and fiendish tale, our latest Master Mystery Production will use the spirit of some of the greatest authors in history to close the book on a carefully concocted crime.  Who will be able to learn what happens in…

THE LAST CHAPTER

It’s the annual afterlife gathering of the greatest ghost writers in the world.  And we mean ghost.  Some of the most famous (and infamous) literary legends have come together for a yearly post-mortem writers retreat.  William Shakespeare discusses poetry with Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe.  Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker enjoy a little tête-à-tête when not arguing about their tastes in literature.  And Agatha Christie prefers the tea over the debates.  But as the day wears on, the plot thickens. Charles Dickens has issued a tantalizing challenge: Can any of the guests surmise the intended last chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, his famous unfinished novel?  It’ll be an evening of lively debate and scandalous secrets as the world’s greatest talents take on the world’s most unsolvable mystery.  But what will happen when one of their own seeks a more…creative finish?

Our client this time is an Orange County-based writer’s group with a member who has been a big fan of MMP for a while now.  Having attended some of our greatest hits such as Wildflowers for the Funeral, The Last Garden Party, Bury Me in Paris, Ode to Agatha, Anonymous, and The Silent City, she knew MMP was the one to design a fundraiser show for her group.  With a very special challenge: to create a mystery that did not focus on murder.  We love a challenge, so of course we took it on. We focused on an author’s legacy instead and a shocking act that endangers the author’s spirit and their memory. Books are sacred to an author, and we planned a surprise that will motivate any book lover into solving the crime.  There’s no room to cry over spilled ink in this story.

Speaking of challenges, we took that as the root of designing the show and how it was played.  Similar to the structure of The Silent City, we’re presenting a series of individual challenges themed after the authors/suspects.  With creative titles such as the Wit’s Challenge, the Bard’s Challenge, and so on, each one with be a small logic puzzle based on the literary talents of our characters which, when solved, will earn the crowd a clue to the mystery as a whole.  Talking all the clues together, a pattern will emerge and the guilty will be revealed.

The Last Chapter, a new interactive mystery, performs Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 3 p.m. in Garden Grove, CA. Tickets are $20 for single admission, $35 for couples. For ticketing information, contact chautona@chautona.com.  Stay tuned for a more in-depth look at the authors we chose and the style of the show in our first behind-the-scenes post of 2018!  Let’s start the year off with some great reads.

Hope to see you at The Last Chapter!

–Master Mystery Productions