Florida Studio Theatre uses ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ to craft a comic mystery

During a stint on the long-gone daytime soap opera “Loving,” Will Osborne started talking to one of his castmates about playwriting and how theaters were always looking for a good murder mystery.

“We thought it might be lucrative to write a mystery because it could get produced a lot,” Osborne recalled.

So he and fellow actor Anthony Herrera, who played a villain on the series, started writing what became “Smoke and Mirrors,” a comical mystery returning to Florida Studio Theatre. It’s about a power-hungry Hollywood director running roughshod over everyone he comes across during the filming of a new movie on a remote island off the coast of Mississippi.

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“We couldn’t help writing a comedy because we just cracked ourselves up so much on the set,” Osborne recalled in a recent Zoom interview. “I think humor in general is something I do in everything I write. We called it a comedy set on a murder mystery framework.”

Herrera died of cancer in 2011.

“I remember we went back and studied what I considered classic mysteries – like ‘Dial M for Murder’ – to see what made every scene engaging, not just what was the overarching mystery. We found things like when the audience knows one person is lying to somebody. It’s very compelling.”

The play was first produced in 1991 and has received numerous productions at theaters around the country in the last 30 years, including one in 2000 at Florida Studio Theatre, which is bringing it back in a new staging as part of its summer season.

But first, Osborne and director Catherine Randazzo went through the script for updates to make it contemporary.

“A lot of the show hinges on switching computer disks and a storm taking the phone out. We have to incorporate the idea of cellphones and thumb drives instead of floppy disks and still make all the subterfuge work,” Osborne said. They also worked on diversifying the pool of characters and actors.

Randazzo, an associate artist at FST who is making her mainstage directing debut after staging numerous cabaret shows, said she fell in love with the play after reading just the start of it.

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“This is a perfect kind of show for an actor to be in with fun, high energy, clear characters. You don’t really know what’s about to happen and you don’t know how it’s going to end,” said Randazzo, who is also an actress.

Ben Cherry plays the film director, Hamilton, who develops a scheme to get rid of his dim-witted leading man, Derek, played by Jack Gerhard. He also gets the help of the screenwriter, Clark (played by Alberto Bonilla), and tries to get his own wife, Barbara (Alanna Smith), to toe the line. Justin Ness plays the local sheriff who uncovers some unexpected twists in the story. Gerhard previously appeared in the FST cabaret show “Friends in Low Places” earlier this year. The other cast members are new to Sarasota.

Randazzo said she and the cast have been figuring out the line between the mystery and the comedy. “It’s true what they say about theater, that 90 percent of good directing is casting and we have an excellent cast, and they understand the genuine needs of the characters. If everybody is on the same page and plays the emotional need of every character in the scene with genuineness, the comedy plays itself.”

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Randazzo said it was important to change the time frame to today because “the 1990s would be kind of odd to figure out what to do with the costumes. It wouldn’t be clear when it was.”

Osborne said he has written a number of short plays in addition to “Smoke and Mirrors” but he is probably better known for the books and musicals he has created inspired by the “Magic Tree House” series created by his wife, Mary Pope Osborne.

She has written more than 50 books in her time travel series that involve historic events and fantasy.

“Mary does immaculate research, that’s how she gets her plots, whether it’s about Pompeii or the Galveston flood. She studies up on it and a lot of teachers were using the books in their classrooms as a springboard to lessons about the history,” he said.

Eventually, they came up with the idea of creating nonfiction companion books “to give the fact about the fiction,” he said.

Osborne describes the work as “fun and hard” and despite the success, it has remained “almost a mom and pop kitchen operation.” He also works with composer Randy Courts, and Courts' wife, playwright Jenny Laird, to create multiple touring musical productions based on the books that can be presented in schools and elsewhere.

“We’ve done nine musicals and they are done all over the world,” Osborne said. “Our collaborators are our best friends, so it’s fun when we’re working together.”

Not all the books are ripe for musicalizing, at least for the theater, he said.

“There’s certainly a theatrical element to the stories,” he said. “But they take place in so many varied locations, a castle in one book, the Amazon jungle in another, I’m not sure how you’d stage and how do you make the music suit the environment of the whole book.”

‘Smoke and Mirrors’

By Will Osborne and Anthony Herrera. Directed by Catherine Randazzo. Runs Aug. 3-21 in Florida Studio Theatre’s Gompertz Theatre, 1265 Second St., Sarasota. 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Florida Studio Theatre stages comedy mystery ‘Smoke and Mirrors’