From Artistic Director/Owner Lee H. Adams

Mystery Cafe started in the basement of a dive bar in Central Square, Cambridge (near Boston) in April, 1987. I was one of the original cast members. We had no idea what we were doing. We all kind of collaborated on how we would work a three course meal into a participatory murder mystery comedy.

There were no interactive dinner theaters around yet, there was no template for any of this stuff.

Anyway, our "theater" sat about 70 people. We hired a guy from Syria who spoke no English to cater the shows. We came up with the idea of "Bribe Money" as a way to make people feel more comfortable engaging the actors. We didn't add the "Clue Packets" until a couple weeks after we opened.

I remember us thinking that if everything went well we could do four shows a month. We could all make an extra fifty bucks a week, and have some fun doing what we all loved; making people laugh.

Within a month we were doing eight sold-out shows a week and looking for a second location. One night there was a language mix up with our caterer, and we had to serve seventy people Big Macs and fries.

We've come a long way since then.

I opened Mystery Cafe here in September of 1989. I had visited the Twin Cities for the first time that summer with my fiancé (now my wife), who grew up here. I liked it a lot, and my wife (and her parents) persuaded me to give it a go.

I'm not sure how, but I persuaded The Nicklow brothers to let me book out their small banquet room at the now leveled Nicklow’s Restaurant on Highway 100... We ended up doing shows there Thursday through Sunday, continuously for ten years. In that time we have had runs of at least a year at Bloomington Park Tavern, Hopkins House, Mall of America, Holiday Inn, Venetian Inn Playhouse, Benchwarmer Bob's and Tequilaberrys. We have done corporate functions and events at virtually every major hotel in the Twin Cities, as well as shows on boats, trains, backyards and once in a really weird rich guy's living room. In 1998 The Holiday Inn West became our home for six years, and in the Fall of 2003, we moved to our current year-round location at the Crowne Plaza North.

The thing I am proudest of is our actors. We pay better than most so we audition up to a hundred actors a season. A lot of people fancy themselves funny, but few of them are willing to work as hard and stay as committed to what we are trying to do as the dozen or so folks that have become our core actors.

I know what we do ain't Shakespeare, but you gotta admit, it's a lot newer...

Lee Adams