A Vancouver Mystery

Although most of the spotlight during the recent winter Olympics was on the sporting events, there was a companion celebration taking place before, during and after the games, the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Featuring comedy, dance, music, theater, and video, it began in mid-January and will continue through the end of this month.

Coming up this weekend and next is a production of Glen Berger's mystery play Underneath the Lintel, which premiered in 2001 in Los Angeles and ran for 450 performances in New York's Soho Playhouse later that same year. The one-man cast stars Christian Murray as an uptight Dutch librarian who embarks on a quest to find out who anonymously returned a library book 113 years overdue. The scribbled note "I was here" in the book's margin and an unclaimed dry cleaning ticket are the first clues in a trail leading back centuries to a figure who may be more man than myth. Variety called Berger's play "a cosmic puzzle
that makes The Da Vinci Code seem like a game of hide-and-seek."