The CHS drama production The Butler Did It is a one-and-a-half-hour-long play that revolves around a director trying his hardest to get his cast to act their best and most authentic way possible, while withholding the last and possibly most important scene of the play. The play premiered on the 10th of November and was followed by two more performances on the following two days.
It started off with the cast rehearsing their play The Butler Did It while Anthony “Toni” J. Lefcourt (played by Coal Fiano), the director, is giving them advice on how to make it even better. After that comes a scene where Toni has a seemingly important chat with one of the lead actresses of the play, Natalie (played by Lauren Haiduc), who plays Angela Butler. Toni slowly and carefully explains his plan to her. Toni wants Natalie to fake her own death in order to help the other actors understand how it feels to be involved in an actual murder mystery case. This should make them able to perform in a very authentic and realistic way. After thinking about it for a while, Natalie decides to help Toni prepare the other actors for their best performance possible.
In the next scene the whole cast rehearses together, and Natalie pretends to choke to death. After Natalie was picked up by an ambulance the actors stay in the rehearsal room and begin to discuss how Natalie could have died. They quickly conclude that one of the cast members must have poisoned her. The cast starts blaming each other for Natalie´s murder until a police officer shows up and starts interrogating the actors about the murder. At this point Toni must admit that Natalie and he faked her death. After this the plot twists in unexpected ways. With multiple cast members wanting to poison each other and Natalie desperately trying to push Claudia (played by Breanna Loomis) out of the cast in order to get the role of Victoria Butler herself. It ended in the most surprising way as Toni tries to poison Natalie again, but accidentally licks his poison covered fingers in the process. He dramatically dies as he falsely accuses his cast members of poisoning him in order to turn them against each other. Knowing that the play will get way more publicity if there is an actual murder investigation going on, that involves the whole cast, he dies knowing that his death has at least some importance and meaning.
“My favorite part was how it made you think. There was a play inside of a play which made you use your brain to figure out what was really going on and who the murderer was,” stated theater-goer Jackson Feeney (10).
One of the many ways this play stands out is the amount of precision and attention to detail that was put into every character. The actors did a brilliant job at performing and attendees could really see that every one of them spent a long time rehearsing and working on making the play as exceptional as possible. “I thought the play was really funny and well done. I got to hang out with the cast at some of the script readings and it's very different seeing that script turn into a full-on play,” explained drama fan Maddy Black (11).
“After I gave them the parts and gave them about a week to work on the lines, they came back, and they had it almost memorized at that point in time. They did such an incredible job putting in the effort to memorize,” said director Mr. Allen.
I think that the play was beautifully done. Almost all of the lines were performed perfectly, the makeup and stage work looked great, and the costumes were carefully picked out and fitted every scene. Overall, I thought the play was really funny and it makes me want to watch the future productions of the Cascade High School drama club.
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