Columbo

Vertigo Mystery Theatre’s 2008-09 season is “all about great detectives,” says artistic director Mark Bellamy.

Vertigo opens its season with a new play by William Link, co-creator of the TV detective Columbo. The series originally aired in the 1970s. The show was known for revealing the crime and the criminal at the beginning of each episode, then creating the suspense from watching how Columbo would go about solving it. Columbo Takes the Rap, Vertigo’s season opener, takes place in contemporary Los Angeles. A music producer shoots one of his clients, a rap artist, and Columbo has to unravel the crime.

Vertigo will close the season with another new play featuring famous fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Steven Dietz’s Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure won the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play. “To try and make [Holmes] more human is often the challenge,” says Bellamy, noting that The Final Adventure attempts to do so by showing the violin-playing, pipe-smoking sleuth falling in love.

“We see a great human side of him through his romance with Irene Adler,” says Bellamy. “It doesn’t seem old and dusty. It rips along. We’ve cast a younger actor, Eric Nyland, as Sherlock Holmes. He’s in his 30s and vibrant. Hopefully, that will show a sexy side to the character.”

Embedded in the middle of the season, as the first show in 2009, is J.B. Priestly’s An Inspector Calls. The play revolves around the mysterious death of a young woman and the inspector who questions a prominent family about their possible involvement with her death. “Priestly was a socialist. There’s a social commentary deeply embedded in the play,” explains Bellamy. “The play works on two levels. Not only is it a really great mystery, it also comments on society. The play centres around the members of an influential family and what effects they have on the lower class — how every person in this family has a bit of responsibility in the death of this girl.”

Vertigo wouldn’t be Vertigo without at least one Agatha Christie on its season lineup. This time around, it’ll be The Mousetrap, one of the most famous mysteries every written, and the longest-running play in theatre history. Vertigo last staged The Mousetrap in 2002. “It has been awhile since we did The Mousetrap,” says Bellamy. “We thought it’d be a really good one to do one last time before we put it back in the Christie vault.”

Last time, Vertigo “Canadianized” the play by setting it in Canmore. Not this time, however. The production will use the original setting.

Vertigo’s fourth show of the season, set to take the stage in March of 2009, is Joe DiPietro’s Art of Murder. Written in 2000, it, like Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, also won an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play, an award Bellamy describes as the “Academy Award of the mystery world.”

“It’s very funny. There are tones of farce at times,” says Bellamy. “It’s about an artist who’s trying to become more famous in life. It’s really a great reflection of the art world and how art and commerce converge.

“Coming off of last year, we had a lot of big shows,” he adds. “This year, we’re focusing on going back to the basics, the core values of the company. We’re going to do five great mysteries, and do them really, really well.”