Hollywood Fringe 2019
Vote For Murder
2cents theatre company
Genre: Immersive, Interactive, New Writing
Venue: Hobgoblin Playhouse
Festival: Hollywood Fringe
Low Down
Foul play in an election? We demand an investigation.
Review
Last year at Fringe, the 2cents Theatre Company brought the award-winning immersive show, “Unreal City,” placing the audience in a dystopian society that spanned multiple blocks of Hollywood. This year, they return with lighter immersive fare in a more centralized location with “Vote For Murder,” a live-action role-playing game set in a high school that’s a simply delightful and fun way to spend an hour of Fringe.
Patrons are filed into the high school auditorium for the election of the senior class president, only to learn mid-presentation that one of the students running has been murdered(!). Not only that, but whoever committed the crime is in the room with you waiting to be caught. In a situation like this, a normal school principal would call the police, but at this school they break up the audience into teams to gather clues and figure out who’s the culprit. The whole experience is knowingly derived from the popular board game Clue, including the application of colors as last names for each student and faculty member.
It would be difficult to single out the performance of any one actor in the show (by my count, there are fifteen of them, but I might have missed somebody). Everyone does an equally admirable job of embodying their roles while also assisting with the functional tasks of game play where you’re earning a character’s trust by doing them a favor, solving a riddle or two, running back and forth and up and down the venue before finally being asked to declare a charge against who’s the murderer, what’s their motive, and their choice of murder weapon.
Co-creators Kristen Boulé and Tiffany Asta have done a remarkable job conceiving this operation, working out the nooks and crannies of a full-fledged role-playing game with a gigantic cast. It’s good to remember that not every Fringe show is a traditional show and one would be wise to leave some room in your Fringe schedule for some of the out-of-the-box experiences the festival has to offer. “Vote For Murder” is a great candidate and has a platform you can really get behind. -ZACHARY BERNSTEIN