Coffee with Cream and Cyanide

5w 35-65

J.J. is hosting a monthly book club meeting for Tina, Molly, Glenda, and CeCe, her work colleague. She offers coffee to everyone, but CeCe has special demands, and they all do their part to make her cup of coffee what she wants. When CeCe then dies immediately of cyanide poisoning, suspicion falls on them all. And it seems they each have a motive for wanting CeCe dead.

The action takes place in J.J.'s living room, with just a single exit into the kitchen. The action follows CeCe as she finds herself in the afterlife, trapped in the room in which she was killed and overhearing subsequent conversations among her friends. These conversations throw suspicion in various directions until the true culprit is finally revealed and CeCe is freed to journey into the bright white light.

With a simple set and props consisting just of purses and coffee implements and cups (and optionally books), Coffee with Cream and Cyanide is an easy play to produce. It provides good roles for five middle-aged (or older) women and packs a lot of entertainment into its 40-minute runtime.