Through Frosted Glass Creative, Twin Cities actor, director, and playwright Charles Fraser has staged murder mysteries in wineries, bars, and banquet rooms throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. His approach pairs classic whodunits with cabs, rieslings, and rosés, leaving audiences to solve the crimes before the bottles run dry. Now he’s back with a heist that debuts this fall, “The Speakeasy Squeeze.” And while Fraser isn’t part of the LGBTQ community, his productions are too delicious for us not to cover. Article continues below.
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Before the murders started, Fraser toured with Frosted’s “Shakespeare in the Vines,” which included performances of the Bard’s classics: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Twelfth Night,” “Romeo and Juliet.” The stages for these were literally in front of rows of grapes.
Then a winery had a gap in its calendar. Fraser said that wineries have event centers tailored for weddings and rehearsal dinners, but these venues sit empty in the wedding off-season.
This particular winery asked Frosted if they had an interactive murder mystery they could stage.
“And we said, ‘Yeah, we have one of those,'” Fraser said.
But they didn’t. Fraser wrote it in under a week. He said he used “every gimmick and trick to write a fast script.”
He described the final play, “Murder at the Vineyard,” as lightning in a bottle. After its successful staging, word spread along the proverbial and literal grapevine. Soon after, fishing resorts started to reach out, and then a resort asked: does Frosted have a murder mystery set in a bar?
So Fraser wrote “The Barstool Murders.” His repertoire now includes, “Murder at the Vineyard,” “The Barstool Murders,” “The Wineglass Murders,” “For the Love of Wine and Murder,” and the corporate send-up “Fatal Error.” Fraser has a new show on the way.
The shows, featuring casts of five to six characters, are written in plain prose for audiences who have a glass in hand, or their second. There are on-stage drinking breaks and the wineries provide food service either through their own kitchens or through preferred caterers.
“All the murders are about wine and vineyards, and the process of making wine is part of the mystery with each one of the plays,” Fraser said. “We talk about the food; we talk about the wine. So it’s part of the whole event feel to the show.”
But Operation Metro Surge Changed Everything
After the Trump administration, in collaboration with Minnesota’s Republican Party, invaded the state with 3,000 federal agents, everything in the state changed. How kids went to school and how businesses operated had to adapt to the violent invasion that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic damage, hundreds of legal citizens falsely arrested, hundreds of documented immigrants detained without any criminal record, the violation of human rights for hundreds of detained undocumented people, and the shooting deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
“We’ve discovered here in Minnesota with these murder mysteries back in January, with Renee Good being shot in the middle of the street, that people were not interested in murder,” Fraser said. “I had a show that was supposed to premiere in February, and then Alex Pretti was murdered in the middle of the street.”
Fraser said that ticket sales rightly evaporated.
He and Frosted Glass had to rethink what audiences would enjoy and feel comfortable watching in a post-Operation Metro Surge Minnesota.
Fraser decided to try a heist. He wrote “The Speakeasy Squeeze.”
It takes place during Prohibition and features a winery that hides its true operation behind the front of Ma Houlihan’s wholesome grape jelly business. Or as Fraser put it, “the greatest jelly jam that’s never been jarred.” In the meantime, they produce hooch for the town of West Fargo.
“The Speakeasy Squeeze” debuts this fall.
Real Places and a familiar cast of suspects
Fraser and Frosted’s home base is Winehaven Winery and Vineyard in Chisago City. But when they tour, they swap out locales in the script for local place names.
“We don’t change the names of any lakes or golfs or states that actually exist,” Fraser said. “We actually use the states and cities and lakes that actually exist.”
Fraser writes his plays for his informal troupe of actors. He said that he always writes a role for Minnesota-based actress Peggy O’Connell. “She and I are perfectly matched in these plays,” he said. Sarah Dickson is his femme fatale.
“When I write the plays, I have their voices in my head as those roles,” Fraser said. “And then if they aren’t available, I get someone else. And I’ve been very fortunate with getting very funny people to play them.”
Shows For Sleuths and Wallflowers Alike
The interactive portion of the show means actors mingle the room and guests can interrogate them about alibis, motives, and relationships with other characters.
The audience member who can guess both culprit and motive will win a bottle of wine.
But Fraser knows to respect the wallflowers, folks who would rather watch and not participate.
“You are perfectly safe at your table,” he said. “No one’s going to bring you on stage. No one’s going to make fun of you. We are there to serve you and help you navigate the mystery of who done it. And if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to figure it out, you just want to watch the show, that’s perfectly fine too. You can do that without having to talk to anybody for the whole night.”
“The Speakeasy Squeeze” opens October 23 at Winehaven Winery in Chisago City, Minnesota, north of the Twin Cities near Taylors Falls. The show will then go on tour to Max’s Social House in Hudson, Wisconsin.
For more information, visit frostedglasscreative.com.
