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The lights will go up April 17 on a murder mystery that nobody can quite get right, a playwright who keeps changing the killer, and a community theater troupe just trying to survive long enough to take a bow.
That is, more or less, the point.
“Play On!,” the latest production from the Twin Lakes Playhouse, runs April 17 through May 3 and marks the directorial debut of Vance Jones, a veteran of the local stage who spent the better part of a year and a half living inside this script before he ever called his first rehearsal.
“It’s been super fun and challenging as a first-time director,” Jones said. “I had close to 40 people audition for 10 roles. So I had to tell 30 people no. And that was fun — that was never fun at all.”
Written by Rick Abbot, “Play On!” follows a cash-strapped community theater troupe as it mounts an original murder mystery, “Murder Most Foul,” at the behest of a haughty first-time playwright who refuses to stop revising her own work. Scenes change. New characters appear. The identity of the killer shifts with no warning. The cast scrambles to keep up, and as Jones put it, everything that can go wrong does.
“It’s kind of meta,” Jones said. “It’s the whole show within a show, so it doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
The production is structured across three acts, each representing a different stage of the theatrical process. Act One is a rehearsal. Act Two is the dress rehearsal. Act Three is opening night, and the full set is not revealed until then. Jones said the structure gives the audience a front-row seat to what it actually takes to put on a show.
The chaos is not limited to the stage. Jones said the show puts the full backstage picture on display as well.
“You’re going to see the director and the stage manager and the light and tech person, and they’re all going to be trying to get this show off the ground,” he said. “You’re going to see relationships amongst the cast bleeding into the performances. When they’re mad at each other, when they’re in love with each other, whatever, you’re going to see that bleed onstage.”
Among those relationships is a “will they or won’t they” pairing that mirrors the chaos unfolding around them.
“They end up falling in love,” Jones said. “They end up calling each other by their real names.” There is also a long-tenured married couple in the cast playing the troupe’s leading man and diva. “You’ll see how they just figure, we don’t have to learn our lines. We’re just going to be here,” he said.
Jones drew a comparison to “Noises Off,” the beloved British farce built on backstage chaos, and said timing is the element he has drilled into his cast above everything else.
“It’s out this door, in this door,” he said. “It’s bringing this in, taking that out. It’s hitting those marks, not only with the sound effects, but with what they’re saying and what’s happening backstage. All of that is the timing.”
He has also woven in what he calls Easter eggs, borrowing moments from film, stage and television history to give the production a cinematic feel.
“I’m inserting Easter eggs throughout the show that come from maybe the silver screen or the stage or the small screen to kind of bring the audience in to those different moments,” he said. “Those moments are easy to do in the first two acts because they’re rehearsals. It’s in the last act that you kind of have to leave alone and not go overboard with.”
One bit he previewed with evident enthusiasm involves a scene he blocked in a way that reminded him of a certain science fiction franchise.
“It looked like the Star Wars poster to me,” he said. “What if I just gave them lightsabers and they posed for like 10 seconds and I played the Star Wars theme? The audience will be like, what is happening.”
He tried it at rehearsal. It works.
The set itself is designed to turn heads. Jones said the color scheme was drawn from a Victorian rug, leaning into the bold, rich palette of the era.
“We really transformed it into a Victorian villa,” he said. “We’re letting the set do the talking. The set’s going to impress.”
Before any set pieces went up, Jones arranged for a full resurfacing of the Playhouse stage, a project sponsored by Tink Albright. Years of accumulated paint and wear were stripped away and the surface was smoothed and renewed.
“All the paint and everything that’s been on there for years and years is gone,” Jones said. “It’s so nice.”
The cast drew from a mix of returning Playhouse veterans and performers with little or no stage experience. Jones said that balance was deliberate, and that directing familiar faces brought its own set of challenges.
“It’s very interesting to have to direct people that I admire,” he said. “I’m used to taking the direction, and now I’ve got these skilled, tenured forces of nature on the stage. How do you balance giving them direction and not sounding stupid?”
Returning faces include Mike Horberg, who directed the Playhouse’s previous production; Kyria Johnson from “Farce of Habit”; Karen McKaig, a standout from “Nunsense”; and Gabe Potter, who Jones said immerses himself in any role without hesitation. “If I’m like, hey, I need you to fall, he’s like, got it,” Jones said. Joanne Helms, who directed “Laura” and was last seen on the Playhouse stage in “Pine Hollow,” also joins the cast, along with Andrea McInnis, Karen Maupin and Olivia Potter.
Anne Johnson, who directed “Farce of Habit,” is making her first real stage appearance in the show. Pat McKaig, Karen McKaig’s husband, plays the stage manager, a man who is steadily losing patience with everyone around him.
Sullivan Dye, who played Jake in “Pine Hollow,” is being shaped into a leading man role. Jones said the two sat down for a frank conversation about what that means.
“If you’re going to be a leading man, you’ve got to know how to get the girl,” Jones told him. “You’ve got to have some swagger. You’ve got to be smooth. None of this falling over, goofy cartoon stuff. You’ve got to get the girl.”
Jones also shifted the production’s run back a week after learning that a young actress he wanted for a key role was committed to the Mountain Home High School production of “Wonderland” during the original dates. He took the schedule change to the board.
“She was fantastic,” he said of her audition.
Josselyn serves as assistant director on her first production in that role, with veteran Dianne Pankau mentoring Jones through the process.
When he recently sat down to compile the playbill, Jones said the full scope of what goes into a production hit him again.
“It takes a village, a literal village, to put on a production,” he said. “You may not see all the people, but from the person that designs your lighting to the person that designs your sound, there are just so many different volunteers. Lots of moving parts.”
Those volunteers commit eight to nine weeks of their lives to each show, Jones noted, and none of the actors are paid.
“We do it all not just for the love of the hobby, but for the love of putting it on for the community,” he said.
That community investment has shown results. Season ticket sales have climbed from around 140 to 180, and the Playhouse added roughly 1,500 Facebook followers between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons. Jones said the growth reflects something real about where the organization stands.
“When I first came here two and a half years ago, people would go, ‘Have that here? Or where is that?'” he said. “And now it’s like we’ve put our names up. We’ve kind of just thrown the Twin Lakes Playhouse all over everybody. And it’s really worked out in our favor. We’re backing it up with quality, and I think that says something about what we’re choosing to put on the stage and who we’re choosing to put in the shows.”
The Playhouse will host a sponsor preview performance on April 16, the night before opening, with proceeds benefiting Whiskers Rescue.
“Play On!” runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., April 17 through May 3 at the Twin Lakes Playhouse in Mountain Home. Tickets are $15 and are available at tlpmh.org or by calling the box office at (870) 424-0444.
