The Midnight Train Crossing

I'd seen the show before, several years ago (With the same exact cast interestingly) and I enjoyed it a lot, so I jumped at the chance to see it again. It's the funniest murder mystery play that I've ever seen. (Not that I've seen that many, but hey...)
Some of the jokes in the show are just... bad, but enough of them are funny in their badness to make up for it.
They try to make it very obvious that the show is set in Milwaukee. Some of the references were funny, like they talk about different restaurants and street locations and the radio station they listen to is a Milwaukee one. But honestly, I think that they over did it a little. It was funny at first, but when they go on and on about giving directions to places, I drifted a little bit.

The actors also ad-lib a lot, and it’s pretty evident because every once and awhile, the actors would have a very difficult time not breaking down and laughing.

The set is the hair salon, complete with working sink at the front of the stage. The signal that the show was starting was the loud music playing over the salon's stereo system and the entrance of Miss Barbra DeMarco (Mary MacDonald Kerr), one of the stylists and the manicurist of the Shear Madness Hair Salon. Wearing a high and low cut dress (if you know what I mean) and heels, she spent the entire show chomping on a large wad of gum.

As she prepared the shop for opening, a customer (Later revealed to be Mikey Knudtson (Mondy Carter)) enters. She indicates that he should have a seat and wait. He is rather interested in watching her bounce around the shop.
He grabs the newspaper (Today's paper by the way) and settles down to wait until the owner of the shop - Tony Whitcomb (John McGivern) bursts onto the scene, startling everyone.

Tony is, well, very amusing. He's flamboyantly gay, and Barbra scolds him once and tells him to "stop being such a stereotype!"
He replies, "Girl, in the 90's I was a stereotype, now that it's 2005 I am retro!"
I suppose that gives you an idea of how he acted.

Tony takes Mikey over to wash his hair in the sink, in time to the music (rather roughly) until the phone rings. Barbra answers it and hands it over to Tony, who sits down and starts chatting with the person on the other end, leaving Mikey alone with his head full of shampoo. Barbra takes pity on him and comes over to finish the job, leaning over him and shoving her chest right in his face. (Remember what I said about her low-cut dress?)
Eventually Tony comes back and starts to cut Mikey's hair. While he's doing so, another customer, a man in gray by the name of Eddie Lawrence (Played by Norman Moses) enters the store and takes a seat in the waiting area.
A few moments later, the first few bars of Y.M.C.A. begin to play and the door bursts open. Much to the surprise and amusement of Tony and Barbra, a construction worker enters the room. He hangs up his hard hat and goes over to sit by Eddie to wait. His name is Nick Pulaski (Christopher Tarjan)

The music fades out when Mikey, who's had enough of the strange things at this hair salon, flees the shop once his haircut is finished.
Tony turns to Eddie and Nick and says: "Who's next?"
the two men look at each other and promptly say "He is!"

Nick Pulaski ends up being the next customer, who asks for a shave. While Tony gets him ready, the final member of the cast, the wealthy socialite Mrs. Shubert (Jenny Wanasek) enters the salon. She has an appointment with Barbra, and is having a major bad hair day.
While Barbra washes and sets Mrs. Shubert's hair, the two women and Tony chat about various things, much to Nick's disgust - because he doesn't get his shave.

One of the things that they talk about is musical theatre (Yay!) Specifically "Hello Dolly!" with Carol Channing... and Tony gives an imitation of her.
Mrs. Shubert says that she prefers the older musicals, none of the ones by this "Andrew Rice Webber Person"
At which point, Nick sits up and yells, "Hey, remember me!"
Tony looks at him and gasps, "The Phantom of the Opera!"
Nick turns to face the audience, revealing shaving cream all over the side of his face, Phantom-style.

The sound of piano music turns the conversation to Tony's upstairs neighbor and landlady, Isabel Czerny, a former world famous pianist. Mrs. Czerny is a bit loca according to the others, and Tony says that by playing her piano constantly, she's trying to drive him out of business or insane. He's not sure which.

At this point in the show, they start to set up motives. Tony hates Mrs. Czerny and works himself into a (Rather amusing) rage, trying to get her to shut up.
The characters take turns leaving the stage for various and assorted reasons and eventually Mrs. Shubert is left alone. She makes her way to the phone and makes a phone call, then steals a bottle of perfume.
Eddie comes rushing back in, his finger bleeding. He hurried over to the sink and washes it off.
Tony returns as well, having failed to save his Shear Madness Goulash from burning.

Barbra runs into the store, screaming. She found Isabel lying in a pool of blood, dead.
Whistles blowing, Nick Pulaski and Mikey Knudtson rush into the room. Nick is revealed to be Police Detective Nick Pulaski and Mikey is his partner.
Apparently, Isabel had been worried about something and had called the police and now Tony, Barbra, Eddie and Mrs. Shubert are suspects.

Nick demands to see ID from all of the people, and Mrs. Shubert hands him a card. He looks at it and goes, "Mrs. Shubert, this is a capital one card." To which she replies, "Of course. What's in your wallet?"

Nick herds all of them into the supply closet, watched over by Mikey so he can question them individually. I can't remember the order that it all happened in, but that doesn't really matter. And every time the supply closet door was opened, you would hear Mrs. Shubert talking about random things in a very loud, carrying voice. Each time, Mikey looked more and more frazzled. Poor guy.

Eddie is a "used antique salesman" that had some dealings with Isabel. He's the reason that she called the police, she was afraid he was going to blackmail her with some letters he found in an old desk he purchased from her.

The interrogation of Tony was pretty entertaining. Actually, everything that Tony did was entertaining. John McGivern is actually the star of the play. Here it is revealed that Isabel was killed by being stabbed repeatedly with a pair of hair cutting shears. The questioning ends with a very bad, but very funny joke. Tony continues to present random theories about what happened and a frustrated Nick yells out, "Whitcomb - get back in the closet!"

The phone rings at the beginning of Barbra (I think)'s interrogation and Nick answers it: "Pulaski here. Yes? Uh huh. Well, actually, that's great! Yes. Uh huh. Uh huh. Thank you." And he hangs up the phone.
He turns to Barbra and says, "Good news."
Barbra: "About the case?"
Nick: "No, I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geiko."

At some point after all the questioning, the phone rings again and Tony answers: "Shear Madness, we curl up and dye for you". Everyone gives him Looks.

A rather frustrated Pulaski decides that what they will have to do is a re-enactment of that afternoon, but he wants some help from a group of "witnesses" and the house lights come up. The four suspects look at the audience and scream in surprise to see them. Mrs. Shubert realized that she was in curlers and rushed over to cover them with a scarf.
Now comes the audience participation part. Pulaski directed the audience to watch the re-enactment and yell out if they thought of something or the suspects did anything different.
There were a few differences, mostly on the part of Eddie.
In my opinion, it seemed like they were trying to make him look guilty. Supposedly they let the audience decide, but I bet that Eddie gets voted to be the murder the most times because of the way they set him up.

They get into a big argument over little details of what happened while Pulaski desperately tries to keep control of the situation, until Tony rushes over to him and gives him a big kiss.

After that, Pulaski decided that it was time for a break - intermission. He went outside where people could talk to him if they wanted while the rest of the cast stayed on stage talking to people that came up close.
John McGivern tossed candy out into the audience, and that was pretty entertaining. He was a pretty good shot, but not everybody was a good catch.

Act two began with the return of Detective Pulaski where he opened things up to questioning from the audience.
Apparently, according to Mrs. Shubert, it is proper to wear gloves while shopping.
One very loud man sitting behind us observed that Eddie had given Barbra a note and she'd hidden it in her dress. The man behind us offered to help Pulaski get at the note. Yeah. Way to go loud guy.

A call from the police station ruled out Mrs. Shubert as a prime suspect and then it was time for the audience to vote, while Pulaski and Mikey counted... or tried to count. And then, once they had decided who got the most votes (Unsurprisingly, it was Eddie) the house lights went down and the audience participation part was over.

The show continued with things heating up between all of the characters, and then Eddie revealed what happened. He had been trying to blackmail Isabel, but Barbra had gotten wind of the plan and warned her. When he went upstairs to collect, Isabel just laughed at him and he got so angry and he just wanted to shut her up, so he grabbed some scissors and...

I enjoyed the show very much. I obviously couldn’t remember all the bad jokes, but the ones I listed were the most memorable for me. I really did laugh until I cried at some places.
Some of the show was definitely some adult humor, but I just let it go and enjoyed the rest.

Right before the bows, Pulaski had the final words to the audience that *this* time, Eddie was the guilty party, because we had voted that way, but who knows how the show will go.... next time...