Two-person musical mystery Murder for Two features full cast of characters

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Near the end of their 20-stop tour across Manitoba this winter, the cast and crew of Murder for Two came to blows on a swinging suspension bridge in Souris.

“We fought each other with pool noodles,” says Duncan Cox, who stars with Melanie Whyte in the deadly musical two-hander, which sees Whyte playing 10 different characters and finds both actors playing piano.

A lengthy road trip can put a strain on even the strongest relationships, but Cox, Whyte and the four-person crew of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s most recent regional touring production got along swimmingly: the noodle duel was initiated by stage manager Sadie Wannamaker as a silly diversion.

Nobody was hurt, says Cox.

That’s not the case in Murder, the latest production (Clue, The Play That Goes Wrong and next year’s Murder on the Orient Express) in a string of whodunits booked by artistic director Kelly Thornton.

Written by Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian, who describes the piece as a “vaudeville-style love letter to old movie comedies, Agatha Christie mysteries and Simpsons surrealism,” the musical’s action ensues following the death of renowned author Arthur Whitney.

This production, opening tonight and directed by Chase Winnicky, sets Cox, as aspiring detective Marcus Moscowitz, and Whyte in a zany whirlwind of investigation.

Both actors are in the midst of enviably busy work periods. Cox headlined Shakespeare in the Ruins’ touring production of Hamlet: The Modern Player’s Guide (which he co-wrote with Andrew Davidon) before appearing in RMTC’s Waitress, and will next appear in Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s staging of The Band’s Visit.

This fall, he and co-writer/co-star Sharon Bajer will reprise their vampire musical Afterlight in a Rainbow Stage presentation at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain.

Whyte, who has acted professionally in Winnipeg since 1998, appeared — with both Cox and Winnicky — in last year’s Manitoba Theatre for Young People production of Narnia, starred in Feast at Prairie Theatre Exchange and appeared in supporting roles in The Comeback and Little Women (both staged by RMTC).

Despite that dizzying pace, both actors say Murder for Two tested their capacity as actors, especially when considering the fact that as piano-playing triple threats, they’re required to provide Kinosian’s rollicking score and to bring life to Blair’s perspective-shifting lyrics.

Cox, whose primary instrument is the acoustic guitar, has played piano before onstage in a 2019 fringe production (and slept in one as the vampire Razvan in Afterlight), while Whyte, who has a music degree and teaches singing, played a few bars in Narnia. But Murder for Two called for the actors to do a lot more from the bench.

“Piano adds a level of potential for virtuosity, and I’m being very specific about the word ‘potential,’ because to put all those skills together is so demanding,” says Whyte, who at one point plays both halves of a bickering couple’s duet while also pounding out the martial soundtrack to Murray and Barb’s matrimonial struggles.

Playing 10 characters in one production is one of the greatest puzzles of Whyte’s career, she says; Cox admires his co-star’s adept voice- and posture-changing.

“In this space, it’s only Mel and I, but at any given point, there are 12 bodies on the stage,” Cox says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com