Adam Proulx and Horatio P. Corvus in The FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

The FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery (Stage 14)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Think about it: there’s a certain improbable ambition about any solo murder mystery onstage: the narration, the detective, the suspects, the planting of clues, the withholding of clues, the diverting of clues…. The demands are beyond human.

Well, exactly. The weird, cuckoo brilliance of this funny show by Toronto’s Adam Proulx, is that one large crow, the impressively feathered Horatio P. Corvus (“sorter outer of murders” by trade) is in charge of the investigation. And he isn’t just some fly-by-night narrator. Horatio plays all the characters, an all-crow cast list of suspects. Which makes The FAMILY CROW a bona fide theatrical caws célèbre.

Ah, and by the way, Horatio, a crow with a formidable beak, a resonant delivery, and a manic glitter in his eye, is attached to virtuoso puppeteer/playwright Proulx, an artist of many voices and an apparently limitless supply of puns. So, a tale of “horror, mystery, betrayal, murder” and puns: it is an unusual delicacy. And in Byron Laviolette’s production it happens on a shadowy stage lit, ingeniously, by five gooseneck desk lamps, with assistance in feather-ruffling from an audience member armed with a fan.    

The deceased, laid out in the family room chez Crow, is eldest son and heir Russell Crow, a military hero and “a bird of exceptional talons.” And since his murder, “under their very beaks,” seems to be an inside job, the family members, starting with right-wing patriarch Edgar Allan Crow, are prime suspects.

All the trappings are there: interviews with each suspect, denials, the analysis of alibis, and in the grand “Agatha Crowstie” tradition a pièce de résistance group confrontation in the drawing room.

The plot is a clever high-flier, and the writing is a stylish delight. And what fun it is to see such verbal and physical cross-species dexterity onstage.

If you miss this one, it’s your funeral.