A brisk ‘Murder for Two’ could use more clarity

American Crossroads Theatre’s Colorado debut is packed with powerful piano playing, but this breakneck mystery is hard to follow.

Just before Murder for Two began on opening night at the Dairy Arts Center, the performors offered an unusually revealing piece of information in their preshow speech: this would be the first time American Crossroads Theatre had performed the show on this stage with its full technical setup.

By the end of the night, that was easy to believe.

Trent Dahlin, who also directs the production, and Anna Stefanic, its two actor-musicians, were clearly rehearsed. They tore through Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s 90-minute musical mystery at a lively clip, played the piano with impressive dexterity and recovered quickly whenever something went awry. Yet the production surrounding them still felt like it was discovering how to function in the Grace Gamm Theater.

Kinosian and Blair build Murder for Two around an audacious comic conceit. Dahlin plays Marcus Moscowicz, an ambitious police officer attempting to solve the murder of famous novelist Arthur Whitney before the actual detective arrives. Stefanic plays the 13 suspects Marcus interrogates, many of whom have motives connected to their unflattering appearances in Whitney’s books. Both performers also accompany the score live at the piano.

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The conceit demands precision bordering on sleight of hand. American Crossroads has the performers for it. What this first Colorado production did not yet have on opening night was enough technical and visual support to make all that carefully choreographed chaos read clearly.

Trent Dahlin and Anna Stefanic in Murder for Two at the Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, Colo. | Photo: Dylan and Clarity Frank

Suspects that blend together

Dahlin gives the madness a sturdy center. He plays the aspiring detective with an earnest, by-the-books determination that gives Stefanic’s parade of eccentrics something solid to bounce against. Marcus even develops a hint of vulnerability beneath his obsession with cracking the case, which Dahlin handles without slowing the comedy.

Stefanic faces the more mercurial challenge, and her best transformations demonstrate why the show can be such a pleasure. As Barrette Lewis, a glamorous ballerina, Stefanic alters her posture, vocal register and physical rhythm enough that the character materializes instantly. Her flirtatious duet with Marcus is among the evening’s funniest stretches, with Stefanic deploying grand pliés and prima-donna hauteur while Dahlin struggles to keep the investigation moving.

Other suspects prove harder to separate. Several voices settle into a similar childlike register, particularly the graduate student and young boys, and the diction becomes difficult to decipher. A boys’ choir number was especially muddy. With Stefanic receiving almost no visual assistance beyond a red scarf, those vocal and physical distinctions have to do nearly all the storytelling, and too often the identities blur.

Anna Stefanic and Trent Dahlin in Murder for Two at the Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, Colo. | Photo: Dylan and Clarity Frank

When speed outruns clarity

The simple scenic design compounds the problem. White fabric panels sketched to resemble bookshelves, a white backdrop and the piano occupy a stage that otherwise feels conspicuously open.

Minimalism suits a piece built on two performers conjuring an entire mansion, but the vastness of the Grace Gamm stage makes this production feel sparse rather than concentrated. A few more carefully chosen costume pieces or props could help the audience track Stefanic’s transformations without sacrificing the show’s actor-driven conceit.

More damaging on opening night was the sound balance. Dahlin and Stefanic are formidable pianists, attacking the score with muscular energy, yet the piano repeatedly overwhelmed their amplified voices. In a musical where songs inventory motives, clues and relationships at breakneck speed, missing lyrics means losing pieces of the investigation.

Opening-night technical stumbles magnified that problem. Early on, an audience member called out that Dahlin’s microphone was not working. Late in the performance, the actors briefly had to check with the booth about what “comes next” before pushing forward.

Those moments are fixable, and the performers’ ability to recover speaks to how thoroughly rehearsed the underlying work is. This is American Crossroads Theatre’s first fully professional, all-Equity Colorado production, and there is enough talent onstage to make a return worthwhile. What Murder for Two needs now is greater technical support, stronger visual definition and more time for its moving parts to snap into alignment.

In a whodunit, solving the murder difficult. Following the suspects shouldn’t be.