BWW Reviews: Golden Era Whodonit SIDETRACKED at Macha Theatre

Sidetracked
by Sharon Michaels
directed by Ray A. Rochelle
Macha Theatre
through February 19

Think Agatha Christie with a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek dialogue, as Sidetracked explores via a flimsy plot the murder of a tycoon who has stolen the formula for a product called Forever Young and renamed it Ageless. Everyone in the ensemble could have committed the crime...well, almost everyone. There's Henry Berlinger (Bix Barnaba), who created the product, his wife Wanda (Michele Bernath) who has previously unrevealed lascivious dealings with Dr. Joseph Feinstein - the victim, Brett Hart (David P. Johnson), the attractive actor/model who is the coverboy for Ageless - and whose contract has been unexpectedly terminated, his attractive agent Veronica Lacey (Sondra Currie), who invested far too much money in Feinstein's project without return. Those less likely suspects include Dawn Lovett (Jamison Lingle), the supposed daughter of Feinstein, and Julio Jorge Juarez (Carlos Ciurlizza), the overfriendly dancing bartender at the Union Station Cafe, who understandably has nothing to do with the victim or the investigation. Place movie-fanatic detective Richard Doyle (James Gleason), who has been approached at the top by Lovett to find her father, in charge of the investigation and there's even more fun with a cute audience opinion poll segment thrown in.

Go for the sheer enjoyment of Sidetracked. It's a light, fluffy entertainment that provides the perfect distraction from our world-weary times.

http://www.machatheatre.org/home.html

(photo credit: Ed Krieger)