Murder at the Vicarage

WRITTEN BY: Agatha Christie
PERFORMED AT: East High School, Corning, NY
PERFORMED ON: November 17-19, 1994
DIRECTOR: Judy Cross
SPONSORED BY: EHS Drama Club
CAST:
* THE VICAR (REV. LEONARD CLEMENT)- Aaron Goldman
* GRISELDA (HIS WIFE)- Erin Hogan
* DENNIS (HIS NEPHEW)- Mike Jackson
* MARY (THE MAID)- Allison Masteller
* RONALD HAWES (THE CURATOR)- David Alan Scott Jr.
* LETTICE PROTHEROE- Brianne Moss
* COLONEL PROTHEROE [THE BODY]- Ben Stermole
* MISS MARPLE- Sarah VanEtten
* MRS. PRICE-RIDLEY- Mary Cordero
* ANNE PROTHEROE- Kate Lally
* LAWRENCE REDDING- Eric English
* DR. JOHN HAYDOCK- Michael Riviello
* INSPECTOR SLACK- Leo Stermole
* POLICE CONSTABLE JENNINGS- Louis Stermole

PLOT: Who killed the Churchwarden (Ben Stermole)? The elderly-but-wise Miss Marple (Sarah VanEtten) intends to find out. A mystery drama.

HISTORY: This was my first real experience as a major character in a stage play.
At this point, I was at the social peak of my high school years, hanging out with most of the cast. Together, we would have fun playing Trivial Pursuit and Freeze Tag, watching "The Crow" and "Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl," telling stories at Spencer's, and having coffee at Perkins.
Rehearsals were rough, though. Trying to do a stage show and high school classes was difficult for cast members, so there were numerous periods of frustration before (and slightly during) the nights of performance.
An interesting anecdote I have of the show is what I did during the final performance:
In one scene of the play, my character (Hawes) finds a dead body. Looking at the blood on his hand, he goes nuts in front of everyone in the room, including Dr. Haydock (played by Mike Riviello), who he grabs by his coat and yells at.
Just before the last performance of said scene, I put lipstick on my hand to make it look like I had blood on it (I swear I thought this was something the director wanted me to do). It looked neat, but when I grabbed Mike, I ended up getting lipstick on his coat (which he had to wash backstage immediately to wear it for his next scene).
As a result, everyone thought I was pulling some kind of final-show trick (which perhaps could have hurt my chances of a better part in their upcoming spring musical). At any rate, the audience applauded me for that part of the scene, so it wasn't a total loss.
But my most prevalent memory of that night was after the cast party, late at night/early morning, when Allison drove much of the cast and crew--eleven people--onto the top floor of the parking lot near Market Street. When we got there, we played Freeze Tag for a while until three police cars took us away.
It seems that somebody near the building thought we were up to no good, so the police took us all to the station to nail us all for being out past curfew. At the last minute, the cops figured out that I was eighteen (the only one in our group of that age or above), so they couldn't press charges. I had only been eighteen for less than a week before this incident, so it was pure luck that helped us through that one late night in Corning.
All in all, my experiences with "Murder" gave me my first major taste of just how interesting--and stressful--theater life can get.

PHOTOS:
* Me as Ronald Hawes (photo by Ben Stermole)
* The cast and crew (photo by Mrs. Van Etten)