Written at 5am by DU Players Entertainment Officer Antonia Brady, the 2020 Zoom reincarnation of DU Players’ Murder Mystery was a wild success this week, with 122 attendees. The DU Players and Trinity College Law Society (LawSoc) collaboration poked fun at LawSoc’s Mock Trial competition both in name and structure. The case centred around the murder of DU Players’ own JP Fungi O’Brien, a semi-aquatic Drama student who died during a seagull-ambushed protest against Ivanka Trump’s attendance at this year’s law ball in the Shelbourne Hotel.
The judges for the night were two lecturers, Neville Cox of Trinity Law School and Nick Johnson from the drama department. The event kicked off with everyone muting themselves, turning off their cameras and clicking “speaker view” – sufficing for the passive aggressive hushes and dimming of house lights that usually kickstart DU Players events.
Counsel for the prosecution was a houndstooth-clad Annie Wall, who is “a 90% vegan” and stood in stark contrast to “Eoghan’s Dad’s Friend”, played by Fionn O’Callaghan. Counsel for the defence (Eoghan Quinn being the defendant) was a blind and dishevelled American. Lucky for us, the story which unfolded was rapid, insane and steadily side-splitting.
Called upon as prosecution’s first witness was upcycled-tote-bag-entrepreneur and mastermind behind the “Seagulls versus Ivanka” disturbance plan, Mazzy Ronaldson. As JP was once her Best Social Justice Warrior Friend Forever (BSJWFF), they were at the forefront of the protest when, according to Ronaldson, the deceased met his demise at the hands of Heineken-wielding law student, Eoghan Quinn.
Following an opening statement from counsel for the defence – Eoghan’s Dad’s Friend – we were introduced to witness Hugh Kelly: Leinster Rugby fanatic, evident Movember martyr and best friend/tongue-tennis partner of the defendant. Kelly’s technicolour description of the night spurred Justice Cox to stress twice that private school boys are “doses of pure shite”, and Ronaldson to ask via the incessantly active chat “Why do you hate women, Hugh?”. Both comments were met with collective laughter and approval.
Before hearing the defendant’s testimony, there was the questioning of burner-phone brandishing entrepreneur C Money Brady, played by Cameron Brady. Brady eventually admitted to having been bribed by the accused, just after a mistakenly unmuted microphone exposed that the unfolding performance was only half-scripted and half-improvised.
After some quirky closing statements, Ruth Brady took over, putting fresher “jurors” in a breakout room to make a decision on the thrilling set of facts presented over the 90 minutes. In the meantime, DU Players’ Ultan Pringle and Lora Hartin acted as feuding journalists to entertainm the rest of us as we waited on the jury’s verdict
Suddenly, JP appeared, unscathed in a yellow t-shirt, and revealed that he faked his own death by swapping places with Ivanka in the bathroom in order to escape his Fungi persona. In another (more dramatic and maybe more realistic) twist, the two judges were actually running a sadistic legal exercise for the members of LawSoc the whole time.
While the annual Murder Mystery event is heralded as one of the best society nights of the year, Lawsoc and Players’ brilliant online version almost makes you glad you missed out the real thing.
