The Play Is The Thing At Redeemer

Redeemer Lutheran Church’s annual fund-raising dinner theater is no mystery.

For the past five years, the Redeemer Players have performed “whodunit” plays to benefit a different cause each year. This year, performances of the humorous “Murder for Rent,” by Giovanna and Charles Knox Robinson, will benefit the church youth group.

It’s not a bad deal, either. For $12.50, patrons get the play and a four-course Chinese dinner served between acts.

What really makes the Redeemer performances memorable is the interaction. During intermission, while dinner is being served, cast members come out and mingle with the crowd. Staying in character, the cast gives the audience a chance to do a little sleuthing of their own.

The dining detectives can ask the suspects questions to help them decide if, in fact, the butler really did do it.

“They really play that up,” says Marilyn Keith, the play’s producer. “Sometimes that’s more fun than the play itself.”

This year, even the service is part of the show. The dinner servers are all dressed as delivery boys, in keeping with the play’s metropolitan apartment setting.

Audiences for the Redeemer performances have grown a lot since the dinner theater’s inception. Five years ago, when the church hosted a play to raise money for a seminary student, there were just over 100 people in the audience. This year, about 600 people will take in the show.

Performances are scheduled for tonight at 6:30 and the same times next Friday and Saturday. They will be held in the church’s multipurpose room at S3606 Schafer Road.

For ticket reservations, call 926-2072.

Film shown at Holy Trinity

“PowerPlay,” a new inspirational release from World Wide Pictures, will be shown March 5 at 6:30 p.m. at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, S2511 Pines Road.

The film is about a tough, cutthroat lawyer who, in the process of negotiating a contract between a hockey team and a famed athlete, decides there’s more to life than money.

World Wide Pictures is the motion-picture division of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

There is no charge for the showing.