RIVER CITY PLAYERS MOUNT TAUT `DIAL M FOR MURDER' (REVIEW)

How "Dial M for Murder" goes down after a barbecued chicken buffet remains to be seen, but the River City Players' upcoming dinner theater production will produce some gulps in the audience no matter what.

There's no mystery to this murder as we watch playboy Tony Wendice (Justin Heinrich) plot the demise of his moneyed wife Margot (Jessica Nelms). The audience also is aware that Margot and her friend Max Halliday (Steve Ruppel) have been more than friends in the past.

The tension is in how Tony attempts to hold his plot together and in how near the gallows it runs during the three acts.

The cast is fine, most of them University Theatre veterans who pump a combination of youthful energy and schooled craftsmanship into the production.

Nelms sparkles in the role Grace Kelly brought to the screen. She is entirely earnest if not completely innocent, and her British accent is right on the crumpet.

Like Nelms, Ruppel is a University Players stalwart who is perfect in the role of white knight. You're rooting for the two of them to be together from the start.

Heinrich gives a good dash of menace to the husband's role, especially when he's drawing a former classmate into his scheme.

That would be Captain Lesgate (Terry Vallelunga), the black pawn in the game. Vallelunga, so sprightly good in the title role of University Players' production of "Rumpelstilkskin" last season, provides lively offstage voices as well.

His swift scene with Nelms is murderous indeed.

George Kralemann plays Inspector Hubbard, the Scotland Yard detective, with hair-splitting precision.

The production is directed by Chuck Ross, who inventively incorporates the Yacht Club bar into the play and tends it himself. Ross directed last spring's rousing success, "Greater Tuna."

He is assisted by Mike Manning, with Tana Howard making her usual jack-of-all-trades contributions. The light and sound head is Dave Kaempfer, with Ann Swanson in charge of the smart costumes.

Vallelunga was in charge of constructing the set, which Kralemann designed.

`MURDER' SCHEDULE

"Dial M for Murder" will be presented as a dinner theater Friday and Saturday and Oct. 11 and 12 at the River City Yacht Club, upstairs from the Port Cape Girardeau Restaurant.

The buffet will be served at 6:30 p.m with the show beginning at 8 p.m. each evening. A special "show only" performance will be given Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m.