With Halloween having been right around the corner, the cast and crew of Park University’s production of “The Art of Murder” chose a good time to give audiences a few chills, thrills and jumps.

“The Art of Murder” was performed Oct. 25-26, as well as Nov. 1-3. The production was moved from its original stage in Alumni Hall to the small stage in the McCoy Meetin’ House thanks to a fire in Alumni Hall earlier this semester.

However, even with having to adjust to a much smaller stage with only a few weeks left to prepare for opening night, the show’s cast and crew used every inch of McCoy’s stage as best as possible and did a fantastic job for having to use such limited space.

But what really stood out to the audience, including myself, was how a simple four-member cast brought such powerful performances on opening night and how well they brought their own stuff to their characters.

Brandis Outlaw, communication arts public relations major, debuted in her first major acting role in this production as wife and murderer, Annie Brooks.

The entire performance, Outlaw never broke character. She portrayed such a convincing woman and artist who have always been hidden from the spotlight thanks to her artistic husband.

As an audience member, you feel for her character the entire performance. When I discovered how sick and twisted her wishes and plot to murder her husband were, rather than start to dislike her character, I began appreciating her character even more, wanting to join her in her evil scheme.

With a performance that strong and convincing, Outlaw certainly earned the spotlight her character never could.

Marcelo Henriques portrayed the art dealer, Vincent Cummings. For me, I had never seen a character portrayed so convincingly that there were times I had to remind myself that this was merely acting, not reality.

Henriques’s character was a strongly gay and feministic man who was easily manipulated. So much so that Outlaw’s character found it very easy to get him to agree to help her murder her husband.

The characteristics and accuracy Henriques brought to his character were so convincing and humorous, which gave the audience a good, hardy laugh throughout the show.

What was so powerful about his character to me was the emotion he brought to the stage during the fight scenes. As a former theater performer myself, I know that if you want to bring the right amount of passion to a performance, you cannot break character for one second; Henrique never did.

During the fighting on stage, the fear and emotion that he carried on his face were almost too real, which made the performance even stronger.

Matt Shaw’s character, Jack Brooks, was the famous artist husband of Outlaw’s character.

Jack Brooks has a sliminess and greediness about him that made any audience member wiggle in their seats uncomfortably.

Shaw was beyond successful in bringing those important characteristics to his character and the show. I, myself, had to move around in my seat plenty of times to fight off the creepiness of his character.

The fourth and final character was Kate, who was portrayed by Cortney Manning, a senior business administration and marketing major at Park University.

Manning’s character required a small foreign accent and she succeeded in acquiring that and using it well during her entire performance.

For playing a smaller part than the rest, Manning did a great job of bringing her character to life. Audience members find out Kate is conspiring with Annie Brooks to kill Brooks’ husband, and at the end of the show, audiences watched as both female characters succeeded in murdering him.

Manning brought the full amount of emotion needed, showing complete excitement while helping Outlaw murder the husband. During the whole murder scene, Manning came out of the shell I felt she had been hiding in the entire performance and brought pure excitement and thrill while assisting in the murder.

Overall, Manning’s performance was enjoyable. Her character’s accent was excellent but a little more emotional expressiveness would have added to the role.

Aside from a few technical issues here and there such as props falling off the piano and a few missed lines, this opening night performance ran very smoothly and was an, overall, enjoyable performance.

I hope everyone was able to attend at least one performance of “The Art of Murder” in the two different weekends it was performed; it was well worth the attendance.