Murder mystery May 6

Her speech is sprinkled with terms from sewing. It's an unconscious habit. After all, Kristen Marquette is a costume designer for her own acting company. Designing clothes seemed to be her destiny.

"I made doll clothes out of Kleenex before I was even in kindergarten," she said.

Once she could sew, feathers and sequins were her fashion accessories of choice and Ken and Barbie took on the roles of Cleopatra, Katherine the Great and Louis XIV.

But Marquette's latest creative endeavor isn't about clothes. It's about murder. Her first play, "Talked to Death," will be performed May 6 at Lawry's restaurant, 4043 Howard Hughes Parkway.

The mystery dinner theater comedy revolves around a TV talk show host, her guests and crew.

"The idea came from watching `Talk Soup,' " she said. "We thought, 'How low can we go without being Jerry Springer?' "

Wait a minute. "We?"

OK, so Marquette's husband, Frank, and daughter Irene, an acting student, had some input into the script. But then, the Marquettes are a team. Her husband directs and produces the dinner theater shows for Murder Cafe, the acting company Kristen owns and operates.

The action for "Talked to Death" begins as patrons are seated for dinner. The cast approaches each table, establishing their characters, dropping hints and setting the mood. Don't get too attached to the motley characters -- Marquette's play quickly bumps off three of them.

In between courses, there are lots of clues for this whodunit. Marquette even admits to adding a couple of red herrings. The truth is revealed by the time dessert is served.

The play sat on the shelf for more than a year while she thought through the ending. That was the hardest part of writing it, she said. Then came the rewriting, checking it over to check that nothing unraveled.

"You have to go back and see if there are any places where you dropped the threads," she said. "You have to eliminate some clues or add ones, and make sure you bring all the strands together."

"Talked to Death" characters are drawn from stereotypes people can recognize and she admits to killing off a character based on someone she knows.

"I understand the first read-through, they couldn't get through it because they were all laughing so much," said Nancy Marcellus, sales and marketing manager for Lawry's.

She said the restaurant, which hosts dinner theater shows quarterly, is seeing diners come time and again to the same show "almost like a cult following."

Next on Marquette's agenda -- an adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," which the company will perform at Lawry's around Christmas. She is also busy writing another play based on a motivational speaker.

Murder Cafe can be reached at 871-5946 (the answering machine promises one of the suspects will return the call) and Lawry's number is 893-2223.