Entertainment

By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com
Features Writer
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Agatha Christie’s “Spider Web” begins with an amusing little mystery. Two gentlemen are tasting port wine, trying to tell the difference between a fine brand and a humble offering from a grocer’s shelf.

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Two characters in Agatha Christie’s ’Spider Web,’ played by John Arena and Jeff Ginsburg, try to identify port wine by taste alone.

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Quinn Hemphill and Joe Meyers are wrapped up in a mystery in the Actors Circle production of Agatha Christie’s ‘Spider Web,’ through Sunday at the Providence Playhouse in Scranton.

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If you go

What: Agatha Christie’s ‘Spider Web’

Who: Presented by Actors Circle

When: 8 tonight and Saturday night; 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Providence Playhouse, 1256 Providence Road, Scranton

Tickets: $12; $10 seniors: $8 students

Reservations: 342-9797

“When the leading lady comes in after a minute and a half of this nonsense, she admits she fooled them by giving them glasses from the same decanter,” said Lou Bisignani, who is directing the show for Actors Circle at the Providence Playhouse in Scranton.

So the first mystery is solved. But, eventually, one of many visitors to the home of Henry and Clarissa Hailsham-Brown will be murdered – and whodunit will be a far more difficult case to crack.

“When I first read it, I kept switching my own allegiance, thinking, ‘Oh, this is the one,’ ‘oh that is the one.’ It turned out to be somebody I never expected,” Bisignani said.

“It’s a fun play, and there are a lot of big laughs for the audience.”

One of the funnier moments hinges on the performance of 11-year-old actress Quinn Hemphill, who plays Clarissa’s stepdaughter, Pippa.

“She’s playing cards on the floor, while adults are chatting around her,” the director said. “She gets up to leave, and her stepmother says: ‘Wait, here, you forgot this.’ ‘Oh, don’t forget your satchel.’ ‘Oh, you forgot your hat.’ ‘Oh, you forgot your bun.’

The girl ends up holding all these things and opening her mouth for the bun. You can see she’s getting annoyed, and she kicks the door open with her foot.

“She does a great comic turn,” Bisignani said. “It’s a complicated bit of blocking.”

Young Pippa, incidentally, has a happy life with her father and stepmother – much more stable than the life you imagine she could have with her drug-addicted biological mother, Miranda, and Miranda’s sinister lover, Oliver.

When Oliver shows up to say Miranda wants custody of Pippa … well, things really start to happen.

“This is the kind of play where the leading lady almost trips over a dead body, and it’s full of people overhearing things in doorways,” Bisignani said. “It’s a hoot.”