My Fatal Valentine

WRITTEN BY: Eileen Moushey
PERFORMED AT: Tag's Tavern, Big Flats
PERFORMED ON: February 3, 10, 15 (rescheduled from 14) and 17, 2007
DIRECTED BY: Bill Christoffels
SPONSORED BY: Tag's Prime Time Players, Big Flats
CAST:
* MAUDE- Felisha Noble
* BENTON FISH- Bill Christoffels
* JANE FORTHRIGHT- Cindy Clark
* HATTIE GLICK- Amanda Fenn
* MAYNARD GLICK- David A. Scott
* PRISCILLA EMBERLY- Lynie DeBeer
* VERONICA EMBERLY- Rena Collins (Feb 3) / Pam Lally (all others)
* CHET FARQUIRK- Tom Primerano
* MITZI MOONEY- Donna Radford
* EDITH CRUMKOWSKI- Katie O'Herron
* MARTHA CRUMKOWSKI- Donna Christoffels (Feb 15) / Karen Richards (all others)
* LADY DOROTHY- Jane Daum
* DENIS KNOWLES- Steve Hovis
* KEYBOARDIST- Donna Christoffels

PLOT: An awards show for romance fiction writers becomes a crime scene when one of the nominees is mysteriously murdered. It's up to a no-nonsense security guard (Cindy Clark) to help solve the crime. A dinner theater murder mystery comedy.

HISTORY: When Tag's first wanted to do dinner theater in Fall 2005 for a New Year's party, they initially contacted Corning's Market Street Irregulars, but ultimately got their own group together to do the show. The group, later known as Tag's Prime Time Players, was then scheduled to do four more shows throughout the first half of 2006, but didn't yet have the number of available cast, crew, and/or scripts to pull it off as quickly as desired.
So during the Spring, MSI was brought back into the picture, resulting in the revival of some older shows: "Wake Me When I'm Dead", "Marriage Can Be Murder", "Pirates of Pink Pants", and "Last Dance of Dr. Disco". Except for "Wake Me", I was in all of them. The first three shows were well-attended, but Tag cancelled "Dr. Disco" at the last minute (the night before the performance) amidst conflicting reports of low ticket sales, a presumable result of scaled-back advertising on Tag's part. So seemed to end MSI's history with Tag, which had been riddled with misunderstandings, including disagreement over us plugging non-Tag's shows inside of our Tag's plays' program booklets.
Months later, Tag's revived their Prime Time Players, with themed shows slated for Halloween (October), Christmas (December), and Valentine's Day (February). Directing the Valentine's Day show was Bill Christoffels, who had not only appeared in other PTP shows, but also in MSI shows like "Wake Me" and "Marriage". Wanting to get a cast together as soon as possible, Bill contacted numerous people he'd co-starred with in the past. As a result, half the cast of "My Fatal Valentine" was inadvertently comprised of previous MSI show cast members.
This was good news for the handful of MSI females who didn't get a role in the February/March MSI show "Murder On Deck". It was even better news for my fiancee Cindy, whose only previous roles were a bit part in "Audition for Murder" and an ensemble member in "Beauty and the Beast". Her role as Jane the security guard would become her first major speaking part.
And at the last minute, I was asked to play henpecked husband Maynard Glick, whose role was so small (mostly ad-libbing, and only several lines), that doing the show would not interfere with the two I'd already been rehearsing (Elmira Little Theater's January "Golden Age of Radio" and MSI's February-March show "Murder On Deck").
Cast members had approximately one month to rehearse their lines, and since Felisha and Cindy were both brought in to replace cast members that had dropped out, they had even less time than the others.
On top of that, half the shows required fill-in performers. The February 3 dress rehearsal, performed as a fundraiser show for Horseheads High School alumni, saw Rena Collins filling in for Pam Lally, who already had an out-of-town commitment. Donna Christoffels, who played incidental music for every performance, filled in for an ailing Karen Richards on February 15. The latter show was rescheduled from the day before (Valentine's Day) because of heavy snowfall on the 14th.
Amidst and despite the kinks, the cast pulled it together for four amusing performances. However, Tag would not allow anyone to videotape the performances, first citing suspicion over MSI members using the tape for promotional purposes (which I later assured them wouldn't happen), then claiming they wanted to avoid taping audience members, then (when we tried to instead tape bits of rehearsal prior to the final show) saying they didn't want us taping anything in their building, no matter what or when, just because.
This monkey business created and renewed several cast members' resentment towards Tag, and led me to make a shameless plug, during the curtain call, for MSI's March performances of "Murder On Deck" at Sorge's. Promoting a competing restaurant and theater group during a Prime Time Players show was the perfect kiss-off to Tag's continued jerking around of its actors, and got me laughs and approval from my MSI friends, who equally vowed to never again do a show with Tag or the PTP.