Set in 1930s Nova Scotia, lighthouse keeper and widowed mother Mrs. Pickwick is found dead, suffocated to death by a baby rattle jammed down her throat. The only witnesses: her three infant children Penelope, Patrick, and Paco. A private detective from Halifax (Jonathan Bridgecroft) appears on the scene unprompted, offering his services to the Constable (Charles-Haden Savage) to help solve the case. He regularly butts heads with the children's Nanny (Loretta Durkin), over what should be done in the babies' best interest. Tensions rise higher and higher throughout the night, and as fingers are pointed and truths are uncovered, things reach the boiling point...
To say the show was marked by a Troubled Development is an understatement. People claimed it was jinxed from the start, since it opened at the Gooseberry Theater, a place haunted by both vengeful ghosts and the ill-fated production of Splash. It was originally meant to be a dramatic, non-musical murder mystery titled Death Rattle, starring Ben Glenroy as the Detective. However, his collapse on stage and death later that evening threw production into a tailspin. After several months of frantic rewriting by Putnam et al, the show was relaunched as a musical, with Glenroy's understudy Jonathan Bridgecroft taking the role of the Detective. Production was also delayed by the search for the murderer, and the fact that Putnam is also one of the hosts of podcast Only Murders in the Building, which was also conducting an investigation on its own. On opening night, Bridgecroft was unavailable due to a medical emergency, so Putnam himself had to take the part of the lead, and the play was briefly interrupted by the arrest of Donna DeMeo and her son Cliff for Ben Glenroy's murder. In spite of all this, the show proved to be critically and financially successful.
Death Rattle Dazzle contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name: The Pickwick triplets, Penelope, Patrick, and Paco.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: It's never addressed why the opening ensemble in "Creatures of the Night" includes a bunch of anthropomorphic crab-people. To make matters worse, Word of God says the bizarre interpretive dance they're doing is their breeding cycle.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Mrs. Pickwick is choked to death with her own child's baby rattle, hardly a quick or pleasant way to go.
- Detective Mole: The detective is the one who killed Mrs. Pickwick so he could take their children without her interference, then volunteers himself to investigate the murder.
- Disney Villain Death: The Nanny pushes the Detective off the top of the lighthouse to his demise after he tries to kill her.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: There seems to be a very phallic theme in the detective's words and actions, such as referring to himself as a "massive private dick" and killing Mrs. Pickwick by shoving a baby rattle down her throat.
- Enfant Terrible: The Constable believes that one of the triplets must be one, since he keeps accusing them of killing murder.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: The Constable goes to confront the Detective with new incriminating evidence, only to be murdered by him. He has a wonderful Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! moment when he pieces together who did it and realizes he's Alone with the Psycho.
- Locked Room Mystery: The case initially seems like this at first, with no signs of forced entry and the only witnesses being the triplets. It later turns out that there was more evidence, but the Detective covered his tracks during the investigation.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: The Detective is the real father of the Pickwick triplets.
- Mama Bear: The Nanny is this way toward the children, doing everything she can to protect them and threatening anyone who'd dare do otherwise. Even namedropped in "For the Sake of a Child".
- No Name Given: The Constable, the Nanny, and the Detective never have their names revealed, and are only referred to by their professions.
- Parental Love Song: "Look for the Light," sung by the Nanny to the Pickwick children.
- Parental Substitute: The Nanny certainly views herself as this, what with the triplets being parentless.
- Patter Song: "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It," sung by the Constable as he tries to narrow down the suspects.
- Police Are Useless: The Constable spends much of the play seriously convinced that a toddler could have murdered a grown adult woman. He makes only one useful forensic discovery in the entire play, and he gets murdered for it shortly after.
- Precision F-Strike: The Nanny goes "Oh. Fuck," when the Detective admits he's the children's father.
- Pun-Based Title: Both the original title of Death Rattle (the term for someone's final breath) and Death Rattle Dazzle (a pun on "razzle-dazzle").
- Shown Their Work: According to reviews, the Constable's physical motions are very accurate to how a Nova Scotian police officer of the time period would have behaved.
- Threat Backfire: The nanny tells the detective that she'd let only him have the kids "Over my dead body." He then immediately tries to make good on that.
- What Could Have Been:
- Besides the obvious example of Ben Glenroy's premature death, Matthew Broderick was briefly considered for the part of the Constable as the play was being rewritten as a musical.
- Before Putnam was brought on, the production languished for a while under the direction of Jerry Blau.
