The more than century-old Pleasant Home in Oak Park is an example of Prairie School architecture to die for. On Feb. 25 and 26, someone will, and visitors will puzzle through the mystery with a cast of suspects in “Victim in Vaudeville,” an original murder mystery being staged on the premises.
“Victim in Vaudeville” is steeped in Oak Park history. The play is set at the turn of the century in 1907. A traveling vaudeville troupe is scheduled to perform at the former Warrington Opera House (originally a vaudeville theatre located behind Pleasant Home), but it’s curtains for the troupe’s manager, and the performers become the main suspects. Was it Lucille (Lisa Green), the show’s top-billed so-called eccentric dancer? Was it Frederic (Thomas Holmes), the composer and piano accompanist? Or maybe it was the illusionist Theodoria (Jeanette Andrews), or the father and daughter comedy act of Clarence and Clementine (Michael Bassett and Amalia Najera, a seventh grader at Julian Middle School). It’s up to Detective Otis Hershel (Kevin Bry) to puzzle out the clues with help from the audience.
The Feb. 26 show is sold out, but tickets still remain for the Feb. 25 performance.
Pleasant Home Program Director Sarah Najera wrote and directed “Victim in Vaudeville.” She is also a dancer and choreographer with Momenta, a dance company out of Oak Park’s Academy of Movement and Music. Besides being historically appropriate to the era when the house was designed and built, vaudeville looms large in her own family history. Her grandfather Robert Morris was a hoofer in New York in the late 1920s until talking pictures sounded the death knell of vaudeville, Najera said.
Najera’s grandfather returned to Milwaukee to open a dancing school, where he married one of his students and danced until the 1940s.
“Victim of Vaudeville” is of a piece with other events staged at Pleasant Home. These include silent movie nights in the summer and twilight architectural tours offered on the second Thursday of the month in January, February and March.
Each event was created to showcase Pleasant Home. A National Historic Landmark, it was designed in 1897 by George W. Maher, a West Virginia native whose family moved to Chicago when he was in his early teens. He is considered a prominent proponent of the progressive Prairie School.
Najera has been program director for a year. If “Victim in Vaudeville” is a success, she would like to see more theatrical events that would further raise awareness of Pleasant Home, which she calls Oak Park’s best-kept secret. “Many people who attend events here have told me that have lived in Oak Park their whole life but had never been here,” she said. “That is slowly starting to change.”
‘Victim in Vaudeville’
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25; doors open at 7 p.m.
More Top Picks Best Powered Subwoofers For Home Theaters
Where: Pleasant Home, 217 Home Ave., Oak Park
Tickets: $45, $40 for Pleasant Home Foundation members.
Contact: Pleasanthome.org