Solving a Case with Father Brown
By Chris Chan
Chestertonians who have dreamed of one day actually solving a case with Father Brown had their chance earlier this year when Morning Star Productions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin put on A Father Brown Mystery. Morning Star Productions focuses on historical and Christian-themed plays, often involving audience movement and participation. For example, their spring play Underground Railroadhas small groups of people join Harriet Tubman on an outdoor journey to help a runaway slave escape, meeting various friends and foes along the way.
A Father Brown Mystery is a fifty-minute interactive play. This production was held at St. Mark’s Episcopalian Church in Milwaukee. There are no programs or cast list, and audience members do not stay in one place very long. You start in the church meeting room, where the actor playing Father Brown (He was probably cast in part for his resemblance to Mark Williams, who plays the role on the BBC series. This is not to say he got the role strictly because of his looks– he gave a very warm, intelligent performance) greets you and welcomes you to the little 1930’s English country church jumble sale (no attempt is made to explain why a Catholic priest is holding a fundraiser at an Anglican church) and hands out slips of paper with the five suspects and five means of murder. You're supposed to put your name and email address on them, though Fr. Brown makes a point of saying that he doesn't know what an email address is (it sounds like something that will be invented in the future).
The members of the audience (usually around eighteen, give or take a few) are led into a passageway connecting the meeting hall to the main church, where you "overhear" two suspects having a discussion, then meet the first two suspects, and the local doctor explains the mysterious death. Then everybody's led into the church nave, where you meet the third suspect, then you meet the fourth suspect in the back pews, and you then walk into the narthex to meet the fifth and last suspect. At that point, the audience members have fifteen minutes to walk back and forth amongst the settings to ask the characters anything they like. The intelligent audience members will devote three minutes to each suspect and make sure to ask if they can provide any evidence to eliminate a murder method. Afterwards, everybody goes into the sacristy for the denouement, where all is explained and the killer is revealed. (It’s a busy schedule for the actors. On two consecutive weekends, they had a few shows Friday evening, a full day of performances Saturday, and several performances on Sunday.)
SPOILERS– the play is based on Chesterton’s original story "The Vampire of the Village," but I didn't get the answer right despite knowing the story well (if you do, you get two free tickets for another show) because I noticed they'd changed a handful of little points, leading me to the false conclusion that they'd changed the solution in order to prevent spoilers. Plus, I think I must have misheard a response, and forgot that the killer was probably lying. My Mom got the answer right going purely by instinct, but didn't fill out the form.
There are some problems. The acoustics in certain rooms, and the fact that all of the actors have adopted British accents, means that some dialogue is hard to hear, so it’s easy to miss a crucial line. Father Brown is the primary role and the audience’s guide, and the five suspects are the victim’s widow Mrs. Maltravers, the actor Harold Horner, Horner’s father The Parson, villager Ms. Carstairs-Carew, and the manic actor Phoenix Fitzgerald (by far the juiciest of the supporting roles). The ambiguity of the cause of death is explained by the local doctor (the possibilities are drowning, pushing down a hill, poisoning, strangling, or clubbing), and the doctor reveals the true cause of death at the end, while Father Brown identifies the killer. The eighth and smallest role is the constable who makes the arrest.
It’s a remarkably efficient adaptation, although there are some places where the over-observant amateur sleuth (like me) may be sidetracked by red herrings (a reference to a cloak may lead somebody to investigate a cape hanging alone on a rack, which winds up having nothing to do with the play), and valuable time may be wasted rooting through the assorted items at the church jumble sale looking for a clue that isn’t there. It actually might’ve helped to have slipped a few clues here and there in locations for people not well-versed in church history, and it’s all too easy for audience members to spend too much time interviewing one suspect, thereby missing out on the chance to pick up crucial clues. People standing in the back can easily miss some important dialogue. These are technical issues, though, which could be swiftly fixed, and do not seriously damage the entertainment.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun, far more faithful to GKC's work than the BBC series, and entertaining. I highly recommend it, and I’d be thrilled to see other Chesterton mysteries adapted in a similar manner.
For more information on Morning Star Productions, please see their website at http://morningstarproductions.org.
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