Twenty-Two Trombones Led the Marching Band!

The following review reveals details which may spoil your enjoyment of "Stage Fright" if you have not yet heard it.

After last season's embarrassing "Game for a Mystery," I was a little concerned about the introduction of the Jones and Parker mysteries. For a kids-slice-of-life mystery, "Game for a Mystery" was a step toward the unimaginative fare that's common on many children's television shows and a step away from the intelligent stories and snappy dialog that we're used to hearing on AIO (compare "Game for a Mystery" and some of the other kids-slice-of-life shows in album 51 with ones from the past like "The Spy Who Bugged Me" and "Broken Window," and I think you'll get my point). Honestly, even bad kids-of-slice shows from before the hiatus ("A Case of Revenge," "Teacher's Pest," possibly even the terrible "Slumber Party") were better than "Game for a Mystery." IMO, it didn't offer enough for listeners outside of AIO's target age range...

But, I am happy to say that "Stage Fright" is an improvement on their first case. For one thing, the mystery surrounds a fun play--a musical, even. The atmosphere of the episode is rich with music, a location that sounds good, and a bunch of kids that are fun to listen to. Even Barrett, who spent most of "Game for a Mystery" whining and being self-absorbed, is a more enjoyable character here (who ever thought his grumbling would be replaced with singing?). Emily seemed to take on the role as the main detective this time (although I guess Matthew was more of a sidekick in "Game for a Mystery," too), and I found her narration to be helpful and generally entertaining--it wasn't as groan-inducing as in album 51.

Perhaps the concept of a ghost haunting a theater is tired or cheesy, but this show generally stayed away from becoming too corny or boring. I was amused that my prediction that a parrot was behind the "haunting" turned out to be true, but the important difference between this episode's culprit and "Game for a Mystery"'s was that the bird had been trained to scare the kids--there was an actual purpose behind the stage fright (was there any reason for the bird to take Barrett's video game? No, it just liked the look of it. That works in an Encyclopedia Brown mystery, but not in an audio drama as multi-layered as AIO is.). Yes, I guessed that Charlie Storfitz had something to do with the mystery (he was even more obvious than Andrew was a few weeks ago), but since I wanted to know the "how" and "why" and it was a fun ride to get to the answers, knowing who the culprit was didn't matter. Charlie's reason for scaring the kids and teacher away didn't really work for me: similar to how I felt after listening to "Mystery at Tin Flat," I didn't really like that the whole mystery was carefully planned for a reality TV show. Another problem with the stage director was that he sounded too much like Wooton, especially when he changed his voice at the end. Although he was still a funny character, that distracted me a little.

I thought the message of this show was rather weak--even "Nothing to Fear," for all of its faults, taught this lesson better. But despite that, "Stage Fright" was a really enjoyable show--definitely Kirby Atkins's best work on AIO so far. The characters were enjoyable, the plot moved along nicely, and there were some great comedic moments. But please, Matthew and Emily, try to solve a mystery not involving an animal next time. :-)

Rating: 7/10