Rover Dramawerks presents Stone Cold Murder

Stone Cold Murder

by James Cawood

Directed by Carol M. Rice

Set Designed by Michael Straub

Costumes Designed by Jennifer Grace

Lighting Designed by Kenneth Hall

Sound Designed by Jason Rice

Properties Designed by Kristin M. Burgess

Fight Choreographer Dave Westbrook

Dialect Coach Anthony Magee

My thoughts on Stone Cold Murder or…a familiar premise tied in knots, make that triple knots

Stone Cold Murder by James Cawood

Directed by Carol M. Rice

There are elements of many other plots in Stone Cold Murder. Take the setting of “The Shining” and mix in a bit of every Hitchcock movie you’ve ever seen and stir well. It’s all oh so familiar, but there are more twists and turns in this play than on a theme park ride. You are never going to know exactly where the story is going or which characters to trust or, for that matter, which characters are really dead.

Director Carol M. Rice has cast and directed this play with such precision and intensity that it is one of the most satisfying whodunits I have seen in quite a while. The tension is there from the get-go in this play. Wife and husband hotel owners are isolated during a winter storm in their closed for the season hotel in the English Lake District. The wife is unusually nervous, and the husband is unusually indulgent. Hmmm, could something be wrong? A stranger appears claiming to have been lost in the storm and is immediately attracted to the wife. Hmmm, is he really a stranger? The play quickly becomes mysterious and deadly and what is this about a stolen necklace with connections to Napoleon? To reveal more about the plot would require so many spoilers that I would ruin the story.

The four-person cast, which includes Katie Macune, Trevor Smith, Russell Sims, and Luke Georgecink, has mastered British accents so completely that they could probably all work for the BBC. Director Rice has molded them into pros at unsettling the audience and the pacing never lags as secret after secret is revealed and person after person “dies.” I don’t mean to under praise this wonderfully talented cast, but to describe them individually would again divulge too much of the plot.

Stone Cold Murder is a suspense filled, intense thriller. It’s very much like one of the best of those British murder mysteries on PBS. However, the intimacy of the theater more than doubles the thrill. Rover’s Stone Cold Murder will provide many pre-Halloween chills and keep you guessing until the last moments of the play. Oh, and keep your eyes on that glass door.