The La Grange Area Teen Theater Ensemble (LATTE) staged an old fashioned murder-mystery at the end of July, with a performance of the Agatha Christie stage play “And Then There Were None.”
About 100 theater-lovers jammed the Auditorium of Plymouth Place Senior Living for the final performance of what LATTE founder and director Felicia Pfluger called “part spoof, part thriller.”
She wasn’t disappointed by the effort of her young thespians.
“I’m inspired by the kids,” Pfluger said. “They’ve done a superb job. We have people coming back for multiple performances trying to figure out who the killer is and all the little sneaky things we’ve done. They’ve developed some beautiful characters and they’ve done Agatha Christie and me proud.”
The show ran through the weekend of July 28-30.
The plot involved eight guests from different walks of life, with no connection to each other, who receive unexpected personal invitations to an island off the coast of Devon in England.
Each of the guests has an incident in their past they’d rather not be revealed, which leads directly to the reasons for the murders.
Rhymes are discovered in each guest room, and when they start turning up dead, their deaths are all in some way connected to the rhymes.
“As the show progresses, the comedy falls away, revealing more tension, and becoming more real and macabre,” Pfluger said.
The audience rewarded the players with a standing ovation at the end of the Sunday matinee, and the cast spent about 30 minutes answering questions from the audience.
Mia Wojcik, a Lyons Township High School sophomore, is a LATTE veteran, having performed in five previous productions, most recently as M’Lynn Eatenton in “Steel Magnolias.”
She also served as Assistant Director for “And Then There Were None,” while simultaneously playing the actual killer, Judge Wargrave. After the show, she talked about playing the villain.
The Judge is obsessed with punishing those he’s certain are guilty of foul play, only to get away with their crimes; that’s the motive for his actions.
“At first I was very nervous playing Wargrave, especially the end scene,” Wojcik said of the final moments that saw her dragging Secretary Vera Claythorn around the stage with a rope/noose. “I was nervous about the stage combat, but eventually over time, as I got the scene more memorized, I realized that nothing bad could happen and there wouldn’t be any way to get hurt.”
Wojcik said she had helped out with other LATTE shows in the past, but this was the first time she had responsibilities as assistant director.
“It was fun,” she said. “I’d love to go into directing when I’m older.”
One of the more macabre elements of the show centers around the character of retired General McKenzie.
He’s plagued by a guilty conscience over having sent his dead wife’s lover off to a certain death, and haunted by the memories of his wife as he slips into dementia.
The character is played by Downers Grove North freshman Isaiah Ublies in his first theater role, and he spoke of the experience after the show.
“The General has dementia, and I think that when he first arrived (on the island) the General is kind of handled and controlled,” Ublies said. “But as the deaths start happening, things start coming back to him. And he’s now starting to lose it and he’s less of that powerful figure and he shows more of his emotional side.”
Elena Hernandez-Rahman, a Hinsdale South junior, played Claythorn, the secretary hired sight-unseen by the mysterious owners of the island.
“This is the first lead I got to play,” she said. “I was supposed to be Jasmine in the musical during quarantine, But then Covid happened, so this is my first real lead. This is my favorite role and I’m so glad I had my awesome cast and awesome director helping me. It was the best experience ever.”
Hernandez-Rahman spoke about playing a character that at times, appeared to be the killer.
“It was fun,” she said. “I get to make people believe one thing, but little do they know I’m actually not the killer.”
Contacted later, Pfluger was asked if it would remain a secret how the little statues representing the victims would vanish from the mantelpiece without anyone noticing.
“Yes,” she replied.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
