Today, for once, it wasn’t the gardener, even though he played an alibi role in the HOSI Salzburg’s crime dinner in the Living Room. An event with a great fun factor.

Yesterday (23 April) saw the third part of a new HOSI Salzburg event format. What began on Thursday with an extremely successful vernissage of the photo book project ‘ICH’ by Elfriede Pöttgen, continued yesterday evening with the Queer Party and became another great highlight tonight with the murder mystery dinner initiated by Gigi LaPajette.

Gigi adapted the story, wrote the moderation and, together with eight other Austrian drag queens, created a mixture of dinner and improv theatre at 9 tables with 12 guests each. While hardly anyone could have imagined how this would work beforehand, the enthusiasm was quickly unanimous.

The story and the concept: a dinner party was planned for the 50th birthday of a wealthy citizen. Unfortunately, the host Maximilian died shortly before the party. The body was found when the guests were already seated at the table, the consternation was great and the Commisario asked the guests to help find the murderer.

Each member of the dinner party played a role in the life of the deceased and speculation quickly began about the deceased’s lifestyle, devious intentions and possible motives for the murder.

Elsa von Hanter, the deceased’s suddenly widowed wife, was an Austrian drag queen at all nine tables, the other guests were Alice, the deceased’s sister and psychologist, Maximilian’s daughter Marie with her new life partner, the somewhat bizarre Professor Stefan, Maximilian’s best friend Robert, the house beautician Ilona, the porn producer Sascha, the estate agent Brigitte, the house manager couple and walter, the house lawyer.

During the three-course meal, wild discussions unwind as to why who might have had a motive for this murder. Amazing insights into the secret lifestyles of all the family members came to light. It was great how quickly each guest slipped into his or her role and so great fun developed.

The murderer is almost always the gardener

Not today. He was the seducer of the murder victim’s sister, which she only revealed after much hesitation. When her brother was murdered, she was having sex with the 20-year-old gardener in the summerhouse.

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Elfriede Pöttgen and her kitchen team cooked a three-course meal to accompany all these stories. And the HOSI Salzburg team organised the service brilliantly. After all, it is not an everyday task for HOSI Salzburg to cater for 120 guests with a set menu. Each table had its own butler. Everything fitted and was organised in detail. Chapeau!

Special mention should be made of Gigi LaPajette, who gave a taste of her creativity with this evening. Gigi had the idea, wrote the storyboard, planned 1000 details and organised it with the help of her Austrian drag queen colleagues and the HOSI Salzburg. A cool event! And on 14.05. it continues brilliantly with the Long Night of Diversity.

Hera Lind comes to mind, who said in the rbb documentary last December about Salzburg “This city is full of life“. True enough!