I have directed a couple at church, one for a youth activity and another for the adults. They were a huge success. They can be a lot of fun and worth every effort to go if they are done correctly.
Make sure what kind it is and if it is the style of activity you are looking for. Whether it is the kind where you are participating in finding the culprit, up moving around looking for clues and able to see and touch everything or just an audience member watching the actors on stage figure it out. Sometimes each person who attends is given a part to play out and they might even be the bad guy themselves.
On the other hand the ones that I directed is where there was a script with a cast. The audience members came dressed as formal as they could. We decorated the foyer at the church to look like a Victorian parlor and then each room we had them go in had numerous clues and a different activity to see.
In the Baptismal font room it was set up to look like a gardening shed with an outline of a body taped on the floor. The gardener talked to the participants and could answer any question as long as it fit into the story.
The next room they went into was the chapel over flow room, it was decorated as a music room and had everything from antique instruments to sheet music laying on the top of the piano. Anything could be a clue and then maybe nothing was, or it could be a red herring. The cast in this room was the widow.
Then they went to the all purpose rooms that are off the kitchen and used by the youth. It was decorated as a Victorian library. The majority of actual clues were in this room and the garden shed. The cast in this room was the maid, the butler (my hubby in his tux with tails he married me in), the dead guys son and his wife. Fancy Hors D'oeuvres were served by the maid in this room along with punch. I made tuxedo strawberries, all kinds of special treats, and the punch was some concoction that made you just want to sit and slurp out of the bowl.
Then the groups went in to dinner where they sat with the people they had traveled from room to room with. They had a lovely dinner on real china with real stemware and washable silverware, not plastic or anything...lol.
The cast sat at a single table together and as the meal progressed there were some clues given by way of dialogues arguments about wills and money or some invention that would make the person who had the plans very very rich. Each table got to decide on one solution as to who and why.
It was so much fun they wanted to do it again and again.
