Pauline Adamek
Noah Blake directs and stars in a new musical supper stage show, A Killer Night in Studio City, now playing at Vitello’s Italian restaurant in the Valley.
Unfolding like a mild comedy meets hard-boiled noir murder mystery, the show begins at the infamous “red-sauce joint” on Tujunga Avenue, just outside the main entrance to the famed two-story restaurant. It’s 1958 and it transpires that we are all assembled for a memorial for the beautiful Sophia Vance (Brittany Pirozzoli), the blonde movie star who, we learn, has died in a horrific car collision on the deadly Pacific Coast Highway. Her broken-hearted fiancé, the matinee idol Johnny (Anthony Carro), is beside himself with grief. Gossip columnist Edith Sinclair (Sarah Wolter, who is perfect as the bitchy and wisecracking scribe) gives us the lowdown on the mysterious death with breathy excitement, raising questions that the deadly car crash may not have been an accident after all. But who would have wanted the lovely Sophia dead?
Who indeed?
Was it Clarkston (Scott Striegel) – Sophia’s close confidante and personal makeup artist? A sneering Svengali-type, Clarkston seems curiously bitter about Sophia’s vaulting fame… Was it golden-boy Johnny, whose copious tears may be trying to mask something sinister? Did the gossipy sob-sister Edith Sinclair somehow have it in for Sophia? We see Johnny accusing her of stalking the slain starlet. With all these suspects, amateur PI and hack TV star Ronnie Bennett (Noah Blake, who also directs) is determined to solve the mystery!
We all move into a small downstairs bar for the first act of the play, which concludes dramatically with a spooky appearance of the ghost of the murdered Sophia. The sudden apparition alarms brassy Italian matriarch Mama Monica Vitello (Brianna Kellum, who plays Johnny’s mother and who is clearly having heaps of fun playing the boisterous, larger-than-life Sicilian). Later we will all end up in the upstairs Velvet Martini Lounge for the remainder of the show and the meal.
There are a few fun twists and turns to this (highly derivative and predictable) play. Anyone with a passing knowledge of classic 40s film noir will likely guess a few of the plot points. The best part is that we all get to explore the various rooms of Vitello’s, with its secret doors to mysterious back passageways. As the mystery unfolds around us, guests enjoy a buffet dinner curated by Vitello’s, while live performances of iconic 1950s music transform the evening into something part stage comedy, part murder mystery, part supper club and part Hollywood time machine.
Kevin Allen Jackson and Kristine Dickson are the playwrights and co-producer. While the cast’s singing skills are adequate, Jonny Perl accompanies them on piano very nicely.
Backstory
A Killer Night in Studio City arrives at Vitello’s with an unusual layer of real-life history hanging over the production. Running from September 15 through October 31, 2026, the play is a fictional 1958 Hollywood murder mystery centered on a fictional actress, Sophia Vance. Despite its setting, characters, and subject matter, the production is not a dramatization of the 2001 murder of Bonny Lee Bakley.
The connection to that real-life case is nevertheless difficult to ignore. Vitello’s is the same Studio City restaurant where Bakley had dinner with her husband, actor Robert Blake, on the night of May 4, 2001. After dinner, Bakley was shot while sitting in Blake’s car outside the restaurant. Blake was later charged with her murder and acquitted in 2005.
Adding another striking dimension to the production, A Killer Night in Studio City is directed by Noah Blake, Robert Blake’s son. That makes the play’s fictional murder mystery an unusual intersection of Hollywood history, a notorious unsolved killing, and a family directly connected to the real events.
Vitello’s
Vitello’s Restaurant has been a Studio City institution since 1964, when it began as a modest bakery and sandwich shop serving homemade bread. The restaurant grew under Charles Vitello’s nephew, Sal Zoida, and then took a major turn in 1977, when Sicilian-born brothers Joe and Steve Restivo purchased it and developed it into the Italian restaurant that became a neighborhood landmark. Its location in the San Fernando Valley, close to Hollywood and several major studios, helped make it a natural gathering place for actors, television personalities and other entertainment-industry regulars.
Over the decades, Vitello’s became known as much for its Hollywood history and intimate atmosphere as for its Italian food. The restaurant’s walls have long displayed signed photographs of celebrity patrons, including Frank Sinatra and numerous television and film stars. In later years, the venue expanded beyond the dining room into live entertainment and nightlife, while retaining its identity as a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Today, Vitello’s remains at 4349 Tujunga Avenue in Studio City, in the Tujunga Village area.
A Killer Night in Studio City
Written and produced by Kevin Allen Jackson and Kristine Dickson.
Directed by Noah Blake.
Venue: Vitello’s Restaurant — Velvet Martini Lounge
4349 Tujunga Ave., Studio City, CA
Dates: September 15 through October 31, 2026
Regular Performances: Wednesday, September 16 at 6 p.m.; Tuesday, September 22 at 6 p.m.; Thursday, September 24 at 6 p.m.; Tuesday, September 29 at 6 p.m.; Wednesday, September 30 at 6 p.m.; Sunday, October 4 at 2 p.m.; Thursday, October 8 at 6 p.m.; Saturday, October 17 at 2 p.m.; Sunday, October 18 at 2 p.m.; Tuesday, October 20 at 6 p.m.; Wednesday, October 21 at 6 p.m.; Thursday, October 29 at 6 p.m.; Saturday, October 31 at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Admission: $135 — includes multi-course buffet dinner and complete theatrical experience.
Reservations: akillernightlive.com/studiocity/tickets
Terry Morgan
