REVIEW
The Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre, located on 2026 Yonge St in Toronto, is an excellent place to bring your friends or family for a night out. This company has been around for 26 years and will hopefully stick around for more. The food is delicious and the show is thrilling! Each show has a theme (Uptown Abbey’s theme being upper-class England) that is steadily played throughout the night; even the menu follows along! Mysteriously Yours isn’t just a stage show, it’s an interactive dining experience. The actors come out for about half an hour before the show begins (just about when you’re enjoying your dessert) and talk to the audience in character. They introduce themselves, introduce the night and drop hints about who’s whom. If you pay attention throughout the night you might be able to guess WHODUNIT?! Prizes like Mysteriously Yours hats or mugs are given out to the winning sleuthers.
Now that the company has been introduced, let’s talk about the FOOD. This is a dinner theatre isn’t it? Mysteriously Yours hosts dinner performances on Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays as well as some Wednesday lunchtime matinees. You’re served a three-course meal of an appetizer, an entree and a dessert. The menu perfectly echoes the theme of the night – english food for an english soiree. The meals during our visit were well prepared and tasted delicious. The staff was delightfully friendly and always had smiles on their faces. Mysteriously Yours knows that in order to have a successful dinner theatre company you have to make sure both halves of the evening are at their finest.
The murder mystery aspect of the murder mystery dinner did not disappoint. There was indeed a murder (OOOOH) and it was quite a mystery as to WHODUNIT (Was it the butler? No one knows!). The night was filled with laughs as the detective started to solve the case. The actors constantly brought in members of the audience to participate (especially if they were celebrating an occasion) and gave them brief characters and some were even given short lines. There was a manservant, bikini waxer, the two old guys from the muppets, and a particularly burly man was given the role of Mamma/Mrs. Magnolia (to name a few). Something that made the show special was the constant reference to current news stories; that gave the show more of a real dinner party atmosphere. At the end of the night, when all of the clues had been given, the audience members were given ballots to fill out to guess WHODUNIT to win a small prize and big bragging rights. The detective read out some of the ballots that people filled out with a little humour (who knows? It probably WAS the bikini waxer!) and went through the list of suspects. When the murderer was revealed (they change the murderer each performance so there’s no cheating) the detective explained all the clues that led him to the conclusion and they all made enough sense to deserve the applause and cheers that took place once the night wrapped up. Uptown Abbey is well written and always keeps you guessing.The cast, staff and everyone involved were fantastic and this experience is definitely one to remember.
