It was an afternoon of food, fun and sleuthing when the Oasis team recently attended the Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre production titled “Murder on the DisOrient Express”.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “You said it was a fun AFTERNOON. Isn’t it supposed to be DINNER theatre?”

Excellent observation. If we had your crack-detective skills, perhaps more than one out of almost 30 of us would have figured out the mystery. Apparently, they still call it dinner theatre even if you go for lunch, which kind of makes sense if you think about it. “Lunch Theatre” doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it. But I digress.

We quickly found ourselves aboard the fictional passenger train the DisOrient Express, immersed in a classic whodunit murder mystery, complete with the full cast of usual suspects with something to hide.  There was the suave detective, the disgruntled porter, the boisterous yet painfully non-self-aware travel enthusiast, the neurotic assistant, the nun with a checkered past – all with their own suspicious connections to the would-be victim.

Our job was two-fold: to see how much food and drink we could collectively consume during a 90-minute event (an Oasis tradition), and to try to channel our inner Sherlock to figure out the identity of the murderer in our midst.

SPOILER: We were way better at that first part.

Also, because it wouldn’t be mystery dinner theatre without it, we also took turns playing numerous bit-parts in the performance that usually involved some combination of delivering hilarious one-liners and interacting with the characters in a way designed to good-naturedly embarrass the person on the receiving end. Case in point – look at Ray’s face in this photo:

But it was definitely Greg won the award for most committed, embracing his inner stuntman and throwing himself to the ground (quite convincingly) after being shot at several times with a cap gun.

All in all it was an amazingly fun experience: great food, good laughs, and a plot with enough twists and turns to leave almost all of us baffled. Congratulations to Steve for being the only one to figure out the mystery 100%! The rest of us will probably need to get a few more games of Clue under our belt before we attempt this again.