Scott K. Ratner is no stranger to the blog—last year, I
reviewed his wonderful play Kill a Better
Mousetrap, a play in which he tackles the curse of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap and how the play refuses
to go away. Ratner is a very intelligent fellow who has an excellent
appreciation for the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and as a result, the play
was an excellent satire and homage to the Queen of Crime (when it could easily
have turned spiteful in the wrong hands). Now, Ratner is back with All Talking! All Singing! All Murder!!!,
a three act play which has plenty of fun with the conventions of the Golden Age
mystery.
What is
ATASAM about? Well, it’s a
very traditional mystery, in which an incredibly annoying gossip columnist, Cornelia
Cram, manages to make enemies left and right and then drops dead. She has been
stabbed in the back, and Inspector Roscoe Tennant comes down to investigate the
crime. But with so many motives and secrets, who could have done it?
