Murder, comedy on tap for PHS play

PALMER — Standing barefoot in a gypsy dress outside the theater Wednesday afternoon, Samantha Laselle was effusive about her role in Palmer High School’s newest play.

“It’s possibly my favorite show I’ve ever done,” Laselle said. “I get to act really, really strangely.”

She paused, then bounced, setting her various pieces of jewelry rattling.

“And jingle!” she added.

The jingle-y jewelry and bare feet are part of her costume for Bernice Roth, a librettist and, in Laselle’s words, a “drunk hippy” in Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.

Stan Harris, a Palmer High music teacher and the show’s director, described the show as a “crazy murder mystery.”

Chase Knutson, who plays police sergeant Michael Kelly, summarized the plot this way:

“There was a murder in a past production made by the same people and they’re trying to find out who did it by bringing the same people back together,” Knutson said.

Harris said that the house the actors are brought to contains various moving bookcases and secret passages. The characters in the play all seem to be leading double lives. There are secret agents, Nazi spies and at least one homicidal maniac.

He said the idea to stage this play came to him actually when he wasn’t on the job. During the summer Harris runs fishing charters out of Seward. A kid from the East Coast was on one of his trips. The kid was big into drama and started telling Harris about upcoming productions. Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 was on that list.

“I’d never heard of it and I thought, “well, that’s a really interesting title for a play” Harris recalled.

Knutson was as effusive as Laselle about the show.

“This has probably been one of my favorite shows I’ve worked on,” he said. “There’s a lot of laughs. They still get me.”

Alexa Milbradt plays Helsa, a German refugee working as a maid in the house where the actors converge.

“She’s kind of an eccentric character,” Milbradt said.

But Helsa is smart, able to make a good read on who’s leading a double life.

Milbradt said she enjoys acting because it lets her inhabit different personalities. She’s been in six Palmer High productions and one with Valley Performing Arts.

“I’ve never played a maid before but I have played someone who is German before,” Milbradt said. She also likes the sense of accomplishment she gets. As experience piles up, “you kind of get to see your progression through the years.”

When she was an underclassman, Milbradt said, she used to want to be on the poster for the productions.

“I finally got to be on the poster this time,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.