Raise the par: Swing into the mystery of “Murder on the 19th Hole”

From left to right: Big (Steffen Whorton), Rocko (AC Lam), Cookie (Rachael Lord), Carrie (Danica Murray) and Chip (Cameron Rogers). COURTESY

Someone is murdered on the golf course.

Or maybe it’s the clubhouse. It’s hard to say when there are no backdrops or scenery.

Then someone else gets murdered.

And meanwhile you sit there and try to eat a nice dinner.

Maybe that’s why I never joined a country club or started playing golf, even though there seems to be both every two miles in Florida.

It’s called “Murder on the 19th Hole,” an interactive crime thriller at the Broadway Palm until August 10th.

It is an experience and not a real play.

The venue bills it as “a crime comedy with audience participation.”

There is a lot of murder and mystery, but little comedy.

When I arrived, I was checked in by a Ted Cruz lookalike Steffen Whorton (if Cruz were thinner, younger, and had jet black hair). He plays “Big” in the cast.

The characters mingle between the tables, chatting with the guests and introducing themselves. There are 10 characters to keep track of. (The tenth is introduced later in the play – a detective who tries to solve the crime with our help. As Lieutenant “Lucky” Levin, Alex Dagg brings the show to life incredibly.)

The cast of Murder on the 19th Hole. From left to right: Cameron Rogers, Jayar Garcia, Alex Dagg, Danica Murray, Rachael Lord, AC Lam, Diego Dávila, Steffen Whorton and Caitie Moss.

Two of the characters die, so two actors take on double roles. With two deaths, that leaves seven suspects who could have committed one or both of the murders.

This is not Sherlock Holmes, or even Columbo; the characters are all stereotypes: a blonde, money-hungry slut (Danica Murray), a slick guy in gold chains who wears sunglasses and shirts open to the belly button indoors (AC Lam), a nerdy son who is good at accounting (Cameron Rogers, who also plays Tom “Tiger” Hunter, a very old golfer.)

The audience is treated as guests at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Magnus Prime Country Club somewhere in Florida. It’s 1976, which allows the cast to dress in terrible outfits (costumes by Eryn Miller). There are plaid bell bottoms, bad haircuts, and bland ’70s music like “Afternoon Delight” between scenes. (Punk came along in the mid-’70s, but nothing by the Ramones or the Sex Pistols was played.)

“Murder on the 19th Hole”

Some of the characters have golf-related names: Chip Shot, Barbara “Birdie” Shot, and Marcus “Big” Shot.

There are golf jokes (some of which a friend had to explain to me) and very, very crude humor, such as exaggerated reactions performed by the cast in chorus. (The play was written by Jackson Fisher and directed by Paul Bernier.)

Each guest is given a name and identity for the evening. (Mine was Sue Doe Nymn.)

The piece provides some light laughs.

Moss, who plays Birdie, the spurned ex-wife, was Grandma Addams on the main stage at the Broadway Palm and does a fine job of portraying and developing her character.

Trace (Jayar Garcia), the groundskeeper, narrates the story. Like Moss and Dagg as detectives, Trace wins us over through the force of his personality. He has a remote control that allows him to mute, freeze, or speed up the others. It’s one of the funnier moments of the show.

Two other characters complete the cast: Rachel Lord as Carol “Cookie” Zarmy and Dagg as her husband Arnie. Cookie plays the helpless wife and Arnie is a narcissist who struts around with a strange sort of pimp walk.

“Murder on the 19th Hole” is accompanied by a man on keyboards (Diego Davila). I appreciated his subtle humor when he played “Money” from “Cabaret” at an appropriate point in the plot.

The whole thing is a diversion, a night of silliness and murder. (There isn’t even any blood when people get shot.)

But the plot is as thin as the pages of a pulp novel. And given the way developers are changing the face of Florida, including Fort Myers Beach, something more substantial could have been made out of this plot about people who want to profit by building hundreds of condos on a golf course and are willing to murder to do so.