Elk Lake Drama serves up ‘Crabcakes and Murder’

The pandemic is hopefully behind us, high school plays have resumed, and Elk Lake High School has a murder mystery show to unveil on Friday and Saturday, Nov.  18-19, at 7 p.m., in the Elk Lake High School auditorium

The play, Crabcakes and Murder, was written by Michael Druce and published by Pioneer Drama Company.

Melanie Transue, an English teacher and veteran assistant director of Elk Lake’s drama club, previously specialized in set design and crew direction. Rather than doing the traditional fall musical, she picked a comedy with audience participation based on the personalities and strengths of the actors she had on hand.

Assistant director Jaclyn Gesford is a recent graduate of Elk Lake, and last played Glinda the Good Witch in the 2019 production of the Wizard of Oz.

There are several seniors in the Crabcakes’ cast. Angel Trowbridge plays twin Calamity. She said she enjoyed having a creative hand in her costume and makeup, as the twins were supposed to have a dark, steampunk look, and she put her outfit together with thrifted finds.

 “It was funny playing a spoiled rich kid, I never did that before,” Trowbridge said, “and she’s also pretty stupid.”

Josey Sobeck, who plays Peggy, has been in 12 shows at Elk Lake, starting when she was in sixth grade. “This show is very character based, so we really got into our motivation,” she noted.

In the play, during a surprise storm, Captain Savage Raines goes missing at sea.  The wreckage of his boat, the Half Shell, is found, but with no sign of the commercial fisherman,

Sheriff Sandy Shoals assumes Captain Raines is dead.  That wouldn’t be a surprise, considering what a miserable man he was.  After all, who else would name his twin daughters Misery and Calamity.

The sheriff finds the incident especially curious since the shipwreck happened the day after Savage announced his retirement and revealed plans to divvy up Peg Legg Seafoods.  And since those business plans minimized his wife Peggy’s role in the company and largely cut out the rest of the family  – with the exception of his bootlicking twin daughters – everyone had a motive for sabotage.

Everyone is a suspect, and the audience will be trying to solve the case as they sift through the evidence.

Tickets are $3 per person and can be purchased at the door the night of the performance.

Cast list:

Dungeoness Crabbe: Taylor Welch

Peggy Legg Crabbe: Josey Sobeck

Stone Crabbe: Corey Taylor

Decadence Raines: Victoria Reising

C.D. Lawyer: Tawny Clark

Sheriff Sandy Shoals: Joseph Brown

Calamity Raines: Angel Trowbridge

Misery Raines: Autumn Bonavita

Captain Savage Raines: Mike Hillier