Ravenscroft

First of all: my blog my opinion. Your opinions may vary. Also this contains blatant spoilers, so if you don’t want to know the ending and all involved read no further. Also, I am a food blogger, so doing a posting about a theatrical performance is rather new for me.

Last night I went to view the Little Theatre Off Broadway’s production of Ravenscroft. It is a quaint little theatre in Grove City, south of Columbus Ohio. Even though the venue was small, it had a lot of charm to the place. Apparently some history as well as I read through clippings of previous performances and a fire that apparently happened in years past. The staff and volunteers were very friendly and welcoming, I really felt like I was invited into someone’s home to watch a show as opposed to a business theatre.
So small theatre means a small stage, which I am sure limits the performances that one can put on. For this performance it was a play entitled ‘Ravenscroft” by Ohio State Alum Don Nigro. I went because a good friend and coworker of mine, Jack McDaniel, was playing a title role as Inspector Ruffing. I have seen him perform the Narrator in “Into The Woods”, and he brought a very intelligent and commanding presence to that role. So I thought that the role of authority and reason in Inspector Ruffing was an excellent fit for him.

All the performers did a great job with their roles. Since it is community theatre, my expectations weren’t high, but I can honestly say they expectations were exceeded. They knew their lines and they definitely brought me into the story.

The stage was rather eclectic; one even remarked in the audience how it looked a bit inspired by M.C. Echer. My only criticism of the stagecraft was they needed more carpeted flooring. The cast were dressed in Victorian era clothing with hard soled shoes and hearing the footsteps on the wooden floor was a bit distracting.

Now that I finished with praises, let me get to the critical part of this posting: the story.

The play is about a suspected murder, in which Inspector Ruffing is called to investigate by questioning the all-female inhabitants of a Victorian era mansion. The audience is just plopped into an initial conversation between Inspector Ruffing and Mrs. Ravenscroft. If this had been a Hollywood movie, it would have started with an action event of seeing (or hearing) a man falling down stairs and a woman crying out frantically to get a doctor.

So we are to believe that Inspector Ruffing believes there to be a murder worthy of police investigation. How many murders happen because the victim fell down stairs? It seems like a very sloppy and random way to try to kill someone. The prospective victim could easily have gotten a footing or even survived the fall. Shooting and/or stabbing someone seems like an obvious murder, failing down the stairs sounds more like accident.

The victim of this supposed crime is a 29 year old footman who is remarked as being fit and handsome. Why 29? Well 30 is apparently “over the hill”, which means that I am way “through the woods but not quite off the grandmother’s house we go”. 

The death of a servant wasn’t looked on with much suspicion back then. This was not a man of privilege or title, he was a live-in employee of the owners of the manor. I really didn’t care about the victim, and was rather puzzled why the police would care either.

The first act is basically a complete waste of time. The women of Ravenscroft manor try to confuse and otherwise hamper the Inspector’s efforts to get at the truth of the matter. The characters are mildly amusing, and there are even bits where you might chuckle. It’s evasion after evasion.

Like I am sure that many do when they watch a mystery, I am trying to make sure that I am paying attention to everything that is said. I want to try to figure out myself who did it and why by listening along with the Inspector. So I listen intensely to a lot of facts that mean absolutely NOTHING later.

My advice is if you watch this play; don’t try to figure it out. You will be as disappointed as I was that your efforts are in vain, which I will go into later (There was a spoiler alert at the beginning of this post if you missed it). If you watch this play, just sit back and enjoy it as a comedy.

We find out that Mr. Ravenscroft died very similarly to the footman just months before, by the exact same circumstances of falling down the stairs. This catches Inspector Ruffing by surprise, as he was not aware of that information. Apparently the police didn’t really care about the lord of Ravenscroft manor dying but they DID care about the 29 year old footman?

Not surprisingly the 29 year old footman was quite the lady’s man. We slowly learn more and more about his involvement with the women of Ravenscroft. We also feel pity for the dear Inspector has he tries to deal with these evasive women, holding notepad in hand.

In the second act, Inspector Ruffing stops taking notes and starts drinking more wine. Apparently these women are causing him to abandon reason and take to drink. The second act also brings in the women to start interaction with the other women, causing them to go into direct conflict on their random stories.

Like in the first act, the character interaction is interesting and does provide some occasional chuckles. However, we still don’t get closer to finding out who killed the footman. Like the Inspector I gave up trying to figure it out, and wished I was at least mildly inebriated.

The Inspector then gets hit on the head, which I think was a literary allusion to him coming out of his drunkenness to alertness and clarity. Then the women of Ravenscroft start blatantly seducing the Inspector in hopes that he drops the matter.

Like most long journeys, we finally get there. However, I felt like the Griswold’s in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and finds Walley World closed. I really felt cheated in the ending.

It wasn’t a murder at all; all that tension was for naught. Apparently Mr. Ravenscroft liked to dress up in ball gowns and dance like a lady and dance with the footman dressed as a man. When he was feeling too old, he got the footman to reverse roles. The footman apparently didn’t mind dressing like a lady, but felt the need to prove his masculinity by working out and seducing the women of Ravenscroft manor.

Apparently the footman was all dressed up in a woman’s gown when he fell down the stairs to his death. So as not to cause a scandal, we are to believe that a woman or women were able to completely undress him out of his women garments and put him in men’s clothes. That doesn’t sound very easy or believable to me seeing how they described his mangled frame at the bottom of the staircase.

The happy ending of the story is that the Inspector agrees to keep the whole scandal of men dressing as ladies quiet in exchange for the servants being better treated. He even gets what is perceived to be true romantic interest out of the nanny of the household.

My advice is to not view this play as a mystery or even a thriller. View it as a story and comedy, and I think you will be disappointed less than I was in the storyline.