Anna Turner: A night of murder mystery | Canterbury Opinion | Local Voices from Canterbury, New Zealand

Last Saturday night I looked in the mirror and laughed. I was dressed head to toe in 70s gear complete with a green chiffon dress, Farrah Fawcett curls and lime platform boots.

I felt like I was a housewife from the seventies about to serve drinks to my husband's business partners and take some valium before putting the kids to bed. But instead I was off with friends to an evening of murder, mystery, dinner, and live interactive theatre. 

Upon arriving at the theatre's isolated location, we were greeted by an array of strange characters -a shifty man in overalls, a skimpily dressed barmaid and a drunk guy who yelled out a greeting to us. Turns out the last one was just a fellow guest, which set the tone of the evening nicely.  

The task of the night was to figure out a murder over dinner- who dunnit, with what and why. It was sort of like a real life Cluedo, which was right up my alley. I've always been big on board games, often forcing family members to spend hours playing with me (and despite what they say I do not steal money from the bank!)   

After a haunted tram ride and being chased inside by a bloodied man carrying a chainsaw, we sat down to watch the murder unfold. In between on-stage interrogations conducted by a rather crooked police inspector, the actors came to sit at the tables and gave us the opportunity to grill them cop-style. 

I quickly switched into my best interrogation mode and had a lot of fun living out all my detective fantasies- "Where were you on the night in question?  Were you a friend of the deceased? Do you have a penchant for wearing women's underpants?"    

Not surprisingly, our ability to actually solve the murder declined in direct correspondence to the amount of wine we consumed. But even if we got the end result wrong- second guessing ourselves at the last minute- we had some hilarious moments along the way.  

With everyone complaining there's nothing to do in Christchurch at the moment it's good to see something as unique as murder mystery dinner theatre is still going strong.  

And the highlight of the night has to be when I got to see a certain male (who shall remain anonymous for fear of retribution) walking a makeshift catwalk in Rocky Horror-esque drag.  

The memories of that won't fade for a while. And if they do, I have pictures.