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Is the woman in the portrait turning toward or away from the viewer? Is she young or is she old? And what if anything might she reveal about the name Ms. Ambertin?

It’s enough to confound even a master sleuth, and yet–according to August LaFleur–everything you need to answer the questions and more may be hanging right before your eyes.

Such is the challenge that awaits you in Act III of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre’s “A Most Deadly Poison,” which drops today on a podcast platform near you … or at the newly designed program page on the Prime Stage Theatre website … [read more at The 21st Century Scop].

You study the girl in the portrait, her face askance, as if she is in the process of turning away from the viewer. Her skin is smooth, neck slender and adorned with a ribbon, head high and capped with a bonnet. You fix your gaze, study her until, in a blink, the portrait changes. The slender neck vanishes, and the ribbon that adorned it has become the thin-lipped grin of a face that now appears to be turning toward you. And the skin—no longer flawlessly smooth—appears wrinkled and creased.

That’s from this week’s episode of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre’s “A Most Deadly Poison” (available May 19), in which the New Towne Players find themselves in a room decorated with two landscapes, a boar’s head trophy, and the bistable image of a face … [read more at The 21st Century Scop].

For a gallon of elderberry wine, I take one teaspoonful of arsenic, then add a half teaspoonful of strychnine, and then just a pinch of cyanide.

That’s Aunt Martha’s recipe for wine with a kick (as in kick the bucket) from Joseph Kesselring’s dark-comedy classic Arsenic and Old Lace, and it’s too bad Jonathan Brewster and Dr. Einstein didn’t get the message.

The same can be said for Humphry Jones and Janet Kessinger in Prime Stage Mystery … [read more at  The 21st-Century Scop].

A selection of drinks stands on the table. Their labels read Obnoxious Padre Wine, Stained Fork Ale, and Roast’d Knife IPA. There’s also a pot of Goofy Odour Tea and a plate of wafers simply labeled A Set of Tea Biscuits.

The challenge: determine which are safe and which (if any) might be poisoned.

Such will be the puzzle awaiting attendees who drop by the Mystery Theatre display at this weekend’s opening of … [read more at The 21st-Century Scop].