It was our fourth season (1988-1989) and time for a new Living Black & White™ show. We had successfully produced the first two LBW shows (A Trifle Dead! and XSR:Die!) in the first three seasons, and we knew our audience was hungry for more.
So All Dressed Up and No Place to Die! became Kurt’s third Living Black & White™ script. It was set on a luxury airship (also known as a blimp), and it was set in 1932, several years earlier than its predecessor scripts. Writing it presented several challenges:
- There was the standard challenge of a murder mystery. As Kurt puts it, “I had to find a way to bring people together and then find a way to isolate them.” The airship setting was perfect for bringing people together, so the challenge became how to isolate either individuals or small groups so the plot could progress.
- XSR:Die! was extremely popular, so much so that it was a little daunting! How do you top a show with a seance, a ghostly apparition, Nazi spies and double agents, an Egyptian curse, a body that comes back to life? It was a tough act to follow!
- Since All Dressed Up was set in an earlier year, it provided both risk and opportunity. The opportunity was to create more back story for the continuing characters that our audience had grown fond of. The risk was the need to keep the timelines straight!
Kurt handled these challenges masterfully. He introduced a villain (Dr. Big) so engaging that he brought him back in a subsequent show. This villain could alter people’s perception of his appearance, so he could seem to be anyone at all. But he had a fatal flaw, an amusing flaw given the setting of an old black and white movie. Dr Big was color blind!
There was also a magician with a nifty knife-throwing trick, a love interest for Nigel, and our first and only look at Bubbles, Lt. Foster’s future bride. Mix together with a heavy dose of laughter, suspicion, and multiple motives and voila! It was a delightful evening of theatre!
We’re often asked if we’ll ever bring back All Dressed Up, and the answer is a qualified “maybe”. It was expensive to produce, having a larger cast than most LBW shows and requiring a luxurious setting. So we’ll see!
In the meantime, it is with a great deal of nostalgia and pride that we enter All Dressed Up and No Place to Die! onto our list of top 30 shows. Tune in next week to find out if one of your favorites is next!