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Marriage Can Be Murder @ The Fitzgeralds

by Brian on Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:27 pm

Marriage Can Be Murder
At: The Fitzgeralds

Official website: http://www.marriagecanbemurder.com/

It may be that you aren't familiar with the great American tradition of the Murder Mystery Dinner. Wherein, a bunch of random strangers, mostly the elderly, midwestern parents, and large numbers of kids, show up at 6:00, get fed lukewarm steam-tray beef,chicken, or fish, and some bad actors act out a series of skits where somebody dies, and the other characters talk about it in fake British accents until the end of the meal when you have to try and guess which of the 6 actors did it.

The wife and I had been to one such dinner, on a cruise ship, and boy was it horrible... I mean horrible. I'd rather have been present at an ACTUAL murder then on that cruise ship, watching that sad, sad show.

For some reason, on an unassuming Saturday in July, my wife and I decided to give the genre one more chance. I cracked open the in-room magazine, and found a coupon for Marriage Can Be Murder at The Fitzgerald's Casino/Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Somehow, a $10 off coupon over the phone lead to me getting 2 tickets with a list price of $76 each for a grand total of $75, so they may be silently discounting the tickets, or maybe the guy on the phone is skimming off the top...

The Showroom (that appears to be the room's official name, brilliant in it's zenlike simplicity) is on the Fitz's 2nd floor, and contains a bartender stuffed into a tiny closet, a lighting/sound booth, and a bunch of long tables. Your host, Dee Dee, in a flapper dress and bleach-blonde hair gets everybody seated and small talk commences. ("Oh, really? All you girls are with Christians For Virginity? How fascinating! And you, sir? You raise long haired chihuahuas? You use the hair to make sweaters? Wow...")

From that point on, things commence pretty much as expected. There is a murder, people talk about it, there are plenty of breaks in the "action" where you can talk to the other guests and try to figure out who's the murderer. Dee Dee leads the action well, telling corny jokes, dancing, singing, and enlisting audience members to help out when another dead body needs to be lifted onto a gurney.

Overall, the show was surprisingly fun! There were three murders at our dinner, a cheesy twisted plot involving an Internet love triangle, and a timeshare salesman was poisoned. It was worth every penny of our discounted ticket prices, and I fully intend to go back again. (They revamp the show every 3 months, with new plots, new actors, etc... It sounds like Dee Dee remains when the others go on unemployment.)

The food is edible. You won't ask for seconds... but you won't puke up the firsts either... unless you're one of those people that does that... in which case you might... but you shouldn't... because that's not healthy.

All in all, I consider this an evening well spent. It won't be a huge hit with the Bank/VooDoo/Drai's crowd, but we did see what looked like a bachelorette party, and the crowd was a good mix of people.

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