The Erratic Players return to Longview in new production called ‘Raiders of the Lost Lemon Mine’

Twin Cities Saloon in Longview is hosting 'Raiders of the Lost Lemon Mine': dinner theatre by The Erratic Players.

Longview’s Twin Cities Saloon is hosting an upcoming dinner theatre experience put on by The Erratic Players called Raiders of the Lost Lemon Mine.

The saloon seats 44 guests and the actors perform amongst them, getting their help solving clues that may lead to the location of the lost Lemon Mine.

“So basically, a piece of the show will happen and then a puzzle will be discovered,” said Katie Fournell, director. “That puzzle’s given to the audience to try and solve, and there’s a section of time that they get to solve the puzzle. The actors will come back out and continue the story with the solution they have.”

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The play is written by Jay Newman, and the actors will spend more than two weeks rehearsing their lines before the show opens Jan. 30.

The story is based around a legend about the lost Lemon Mine mountains west of Longview that dates back to the 1870s -- when two gentlemen discovered gold.

“Lemon and Black Jack are the names of the two gentlemen that allegedly found the mine,” said Fournell. “However, in pretty much every version of the story that we have found, Frank Lemon killed Black Jack with an axe over some fight to do with the mine.”

Fournell says Lemon then made his way back to Montana and, depending on the version of the story told, she says there’s only a maximum of five people that have ever actually seen the gold vein with everybody else getting stories passed on to them through hearsay.

There’s even a connection to the Bearspaw family who still live in the area.

“So Chief (David) Bearspaw had two Stoney braves come up to him and tell him that they’d witnessed the murder of Black Jack by Frank Lemon,” said Fournell. “Black Jack, in many versions of the story, was an Indigenous man and so his murder actually was really affecting the (local population).”

Chief Bearspaw had the braves cover the mine so it would never be found again -- or so one version of the legend goes.

Logan Coutts is the actor playing the role of Randy Balzac, a wealthy, shady investor that overhears the legend wants to find the mine.

Coutts says he’s always enjoyed discovering local history that isn’t written down, but is instead passed down verbally through generations.

“It’s rewarding to learn all of these stories,” he said. “It’s cool being able to tell them to people, but there’s always this researcher in the back of my brain that really finds so much pleasure in the history of it all and just unfolding these stories.”

Coutts says a few years ago, the former owner of the saloon, Chris Goss, was looking for a way to attract visitors in the winter and was instrumental in seeing the Erratic Players get their start.

This will now be their third production at the saloon.

“This place is busy in the summer with bikers and road trippers, but in the winter, when they close the highway to the Kananaskis, it gets pretty dead,” said Coutts. “[Thanks to Goss], we created a semi-professional theater company, with one goal – and that is to pay artists. So whether it’s writers, producers or actors, we wanted to get actors paid.”

Daniel Rose, who plays Marco Brady, says he didn’t know anything about the Lemon Mine legend before seeing the script.

“It turns out that I have family history with it,” he said. “My grandfather apparently was close to throwing his whole life away, taking the family into the mountains to look for [the gold]. He was sure he knew where it was, and it was only by chance that he didn’t do it.”

Karin Atkinson, actor playing Cindy-Anna Jones, says she enjoys performing in dinner theatre, wandering amongst the tables and guests and seeing them take part in the production.

“It’s a real rush,” she said. “You get these puzzles and it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s it going to do? How are we going to solve it? How is it going to lead to the next part?’ That’s a big part of my character is her enthusiasm for the legend, for the history and for the idea of possibly making it come true.”

Raiders of the Lost Lemon Mine begins Jan. 30 and runs through to March 1 at the Longview Twin Cities Saloon.