Clueless characters key to Players’ comic mystery

"A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody" is indeed a holiday show. It’d have to be given when the
Black Swamp Players are staging it.
But with that title how could it? That’s this loopy comedy’s first mystery.
Well, it begins and ends on New Year’s Eve, following this cast of endearingly cartoonish characters
through a year of death and hilarity.
The Ron Bernas script directed by Leroy Morgan opens tonight at 8 and runs for two weekends at First
United Methodist Church, 1526 E. Wooster St., Bowling Green. The tone is set in the first scene with an
exchange between the unflappable butler Buttram (Bill Perry) and his highly flappable employer Matthew
Perry (Guy Zimmerman).
When it comes time for Matthew and his Julia (Peggy Keyes) to announce their New Year’s resolutions – she
pledges to read "Doctor Zhivago" – he prefaces his own with a long story. It seems a recently
widowed friend has been having the time of his life since his wife "Witch Hazel" died in a
freak accident. Matthew feels deprived, so he announces that he resolves to kill off his wife in the
next 12 months.
Keyes and Zimmerman have already pinned their characters down so well that this absurdity is accepted as
part of the strange universe the play sets up. His wife’s response is to laugh. She doesn’t think he’ll
be able to pull it off.
So off-stage mayhem ensues starting with the dog Fifi’s demise apparently caused by a poisoned plate of
pate.
Tossed into the mix is the couple’s daughter Bunny (Emily Waters) who after a fit of cluelessness becomes
engaged to her earnest, stolid boyfriend Donald Baxter (Anderson Lee).
Bunny is all body, no brain. No mystery here what Donald’s attraction to her is even if he’s a little
less lusty than she is. Waters is a knockout, and she shows theatrical intelligence in playing her
dim-witted character. She doesn’t play her as an over the top bimbo, but just speaks as if she’s unaware
how much she’s missing.
As people keep dying around her and mucking up her wedding preparations, she wonders if "the gods
are perspiring against us."
It’s both funny and endearing. Donald’s patience with her makes their relationship believable aspects in
this absurd world.
Bunny is especially confused by the detective Plotnik (Jason Wells-Jensen) who arrives on the scene to
investigate all the deaths that have occurred around the Perry household. When he calls her
"sister," she turns to her fiance and asks with alarm whether she is related to him.
Plotnik has watched and read far too much bad detective fiction, and speaks in a hard-boiled patois that
frankly confuses everyone.
Wells-Jensen, who has played a few detectives in his time with the Players, knows this territory well. He
articulates the most convoluted turns of slang with aplomb as if this is the way he speaks.
For his part, Perry’s Buttram is a much-put-upon pillar of sanity, taciturn, with a passive aggressive
streak and, of course, a back story.
The way it all comes together satirizes how mysteries manage to tie up all the loose ends, just in time
for another New Year to begin. "A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody" is something for Players
fans to celebrate.