Did the butler really do it?

WANT TO GO?
The curtain rises on “The Butler Did It” at 7 p.m., Oct. 23 to 25 and 2 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Fort Walton Beach High School auditorium.

If you’ve ever read a mystery, you know there’s nothing more dangerous than attending a weekend party at an isolated country estate.
Sure enough, when a handful of mystery writers attend a party at the Maple estate on a coastal island, a mysterious voice on the radio accuses them of terrible crimes and the guests begin dropping like flies. That’s the set-up of “The Butler Did It,” a mystery farce that opens next Thursday at Fort Walton Beach High School.
What dark secrets are the writers hiding? What does secretary Rita Eyelesbarrow carry around in her hat box? What is Miss Maple really up to? And how much comedy can the cast squeeze in while answering the questions?
“My students have come to realize that comedy, especially farce, is hard to do well,” drama teacher Christa Whittaker said in the program for the show. “This cast has endured all kinds of tortuous experiments to ‘find the funny’ and to hone each character.”
Whittaker said that after the controversy generated last year by her production of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she’d opted for a farce to kick off the school’s theatrical year. She added that she’d never wanted to direct a mystery but reading the comic thriller changed her mind.
Each author attends Miss Maple’s party dressed up as their own mystery creations, which turn out to be comedic versions of such fictional detectives as Nick and Nora Charles, Charlie Chan, Sam Spade and Modesty Blaise.
“I pulled a lot from old mystery movies,” Destin senior Brianna Zook, who plays Rita, told The Log. “The secretaries are always helpful, always there.”
As Maple, junior and Destin resident Haley Chouinard said she models herself on a young Katherine Hepburn: “This was the most fun!”
Another junior, Destin resident Francesca Carollo, said she approached her character, sophisticated Laura Carlyle, as “the upper-east side perfect wife, a little like Charlotte in ‘Sex and the City.’ ”
In a show where the costumes include a gold lamé pantsuit, a priest’s collar and the world’s dowdiest housemaid, costume director Aubrey Russell said she’d had fun too: “It’s cool to see the drastic character changes” and the costume changes that come with them.
“As a child, my favorite cartoon was ‘Scooby Doo,’ my favorite board game was Clue and my favorite TV show was ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’” Whittaker said in the program. “You’ll see all three on stage.”