MURDER AT THE SAVOY - by Noel Katz

"A Tenor, A Soprano" - Featured in A STAGE KINDLY presents  "Encore"

A Sullivan overture is interrupted by gunshots.  The company's patter comedian, Larry Dapple, has been murdered, and the show can't go on.  JESSIE discovers the body, and called Scotland Yard and they're sending over the famous Detective Peter PULLEY, who nobody in the company has heard of.  The troupe's manager, MAUD, finds that her husband, PERCY, is too inept to go on in Dapple's place.  Luckily, when PULLEY arrives he tells them that singing comic opera is his hobby, and he'll be glad to substitute for the departed once he solves the mystery.  MAUD and PERCY then must console Dapple's widow, POLLY, their leading lady.  PULLEY discovers POLLY has been having an affair with WHITTLEBY, the tenor.  So, at least four people had motives to kill Dapple: MAUD was having contract disputes with him, PERCY was his understudy, POLLY wanted out of her marriage, and WHITTLEBY was a rival for POLLY's love.  All looks lost when someone brings up a "strange point of law" that leads to a deliriously happy ending. Murder at the Savoy was the sold-out smash hit of the 50^th Edinburgh Fringe Festival, garnering five stars from The Scotsman, and has since played two other Edinburgh Festivals, as well as in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.  Its popularity in New York and Britain is related to the show's serving as the ideal introduction to Gilbert and Sullivan (the music is full of patter and counterpoint, the lyrics display dazzling rhymes and wit, and the book is a who-done-it that turns on Gilbertian illogic), its low production costs (only one costume is anything other than what actors might normally wear) and the hysterical humor.  As one critic put it, "Who knew death could be so funny?"