This year’s NAI Spring Play, Murder’s in the Heir, provided audiences with a unique opportunity: to determine the outcome of the story.

The play starts off by an introduction of all the characters. The setting is at their old relative, Mr. Starkweather’s house. The characters are all distantly related, and don’t necessarily get along.

The solicitor reads Mr. Starkweather’s will and the characters find out that they will get significantly less money if Starkweather lives to the next day, in other words, the will expires unless Starkweather dies that day. The characters then spend much of the rest of the first act debating if they want to kill Starkweather to get the money they were promised.

The most interesting part of this play is that the audience votes on who in the cast they want the murderer to be during the intermission, and in the second act, it is revealed at the very end. During the performance I attended, Madison Emekter, playing the part of Paula Thomson, was the killer. This play was so suspenseful because the actors really went into the backstory of each character, and they really threw the audience off the scent of who the killer was.

I really enjoyed this performance. It showed many of the actors’ and actresses’ talents on stage. In particular, sophomore Matt Radermacher, and freshman Madison Emekter really displayed their skills. Radermacher played Jordan, a nephew of Starkweather and a bit of a jerk. Radermacher made the audience really believe he was a rude, arrogant jerk. 

Radermacher spoke with a bit of edge in his voice (sort of like Scar, from The Lion King) and stood in a position of leisure, convincing the audience of his self-proclaimed greatness. Emektar played a southern young woman, distantly related to Starkweather. Emeker’s accent was well done to make the role believable.

The set was well made. It had great detail and structure. The audience could obviously tell that the crew had worked hard on it.

Overall, the show was definitely worth seeing.