Steel Beam stages mystery with a twist

Whodunit is no simple matter in Alan Ayckbourn's "It Could Be Any One of Us."

This British mystery tale/comedy of manners now on stage at Steel Beam Theatre packs a twist: The audience votes on both a victim and murderer. And come Act II, the nimble cast has to be ready to play out one of a few possible crimes.

It's a feat of great flexibility, performed here with mixed results.

The play starts off as a comic cautionary tale of a family's love of the arts run amok.

Rude, self-important Mortimer Chalke (Steve Connell) plays the piano and composes music destined to go nowhere but his sitting room. His brother Brinton (Dennis Edwards) is a high-strung artist who has never sold a painting. And their sister Jocelyn (Marge Uhlarik-Boller), while infinitely more down-to-earth, writes books she never finishes.

Add to the mix Jocelyn's boyfriend Norris (Brad Davidson), an investigator dreaming of a big case, and scowling teen daughter Amy (Amanda Zaeske), and you have one rather unaccomplished clan.

Apparently, there's family money that keeps them all afloat, but then Mortimer - who controls their parents' estate - maliciously announces he's leaving everything to a former piano student he hasn't seen in years. Even worse, he's invited the now-grown Wendy (Hillary Patingre) to their estate to hammer out the details.

It's a clear-cut recipe for murder, of course, with all sorts of suspicious happenings and the audience voting during intermission on both corpse and killer.

By that time, however, I found the production itself falling victim to its pacing. To work, "It Could Be Any One of Us" needs to zip along with an energy all the best mystery/thrillers demand. But Steel Beam's production, directed by Bernie Weiler, seems to drag in parts - especially in the sometimes-sluggish first act.

Part of the problem lies in a key role, that of Brad Davidson's Norris Honeywell. Norris basically puts himself in charge of solving the case, but the performance falls oddly flat, with Davidson never committing to Norris' eccentricities or emotions.

The strongest performances are those that embrace the characters' quirks. Connell's Mortimer, for instance, is deliciously pompous - an all-too-delightful candidate for foul play. And Edwards excels as prickly, jittery Brinton, a study in nerves.

So vote carefully come intermission: Killing off some characters would be a real crime.