In the Glensheen Murder Musical, the Complexity of True Crime Takes Center Stage

Jen Maren as Marjorie Caldwell in Glensheen at the History Theatre. Photo by Rick Spaulding

“Not trying to be funny. Not trying to get a laugh. I don’t want anybody to have the worst day at their job. But …”

If you’ve ever found yourself at Duluth’s historic Glensheen Mansion with a morbidly enthusiastic member in your tour group, you’ve probably encountered the guy in Tim Robinson’s vulgarly NSFW “Ghost Tour” sketch from I Think You Should Leave. Maybe you’ve been that guy. I’ve definitely been that guy. I’ve nearly been bounced from the Glensheen tour for inquiring about ghosts with the grace and patience of Pee-wee at the Alamo.

Glensheen is known for a number of things. Among them is a reputation for guided tours that refuse to discuss the murders that happened there.

In June 1977, Glensheen heir Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse, Velma Pietila, were killed in what at first appeared to be a robbery. Details unraveled to reveal something much more sensational: Family drama. Dangerous love. Murder and betrayal and suicide. Greed. All the elements of a proper gothic horror. All the stuff that knocks in the walls of old, looming, labyrinthian houses. Timeless vessels, sentinels. Witness to the ebb and flow of birth and death and all the living between. All the stories. Stories about stories. Echos repeating so many times they lose the shape of their source.

The Glensheen Mansion in Duluth. vofuth via Flickr

The Glensheen staff’s refusal to talk to me about the murders was, maybe, a fair play. There is the house itself to consider, sure. What it represents as an artifact of architecture and history that spans so much more than a single terrible event on a single terrible night, and attempting to keep the multifaceted value of the mansion out of the shadow cast by the events that happened inside of it is understandable. First and foremost, though, there is the true part of the true crime.

The Glensheen murders tick the list of a classic whodunnit so completely they include a candlestick as a murder weapon on a grand staircase. The details read as an amalgam of formulaic fiction … except they aren’t. Real people had their real lives taken and disrupted and destroyed. And these women had identities beyond the roles they were forced into by an act of ultimate, self-serving violence. By not talking about the murders—or the people involved with them—Glensheen may hope to spare ghosts of a different kind. The kind where two women are reduced to tropes, damned to eternity of haunting a narrative they did not choose.

Except … it isn’t spared these ghosts.

This is how Glensheen is haunted: the story not to be told. Taboos are powerful and secrets alluring. Stories like this one don’t go away by not telling them. They permeate and pull. Because if they aren’t done telling, they’ll find a way to tell themselves. Who does this story belong to? Who is entitled to hear it, to tell it? Isn’t a sensational murder at a famous, cinematically atmospheric mansion part of Minnesota lore? Is there anything to gain here, collectively, about what makes this linger? Where is the line between entertainment—dark tourism, tragedy porn—and something deeper to be gleaned? About this sort of wealth, about family dynamics strung through with legalese, about the justice system? About ourselves, and our fascination with stories like this one, on and on until all the humanity is bled from them by the very human act of seeking it? About hauntings, of all kinds?

Is it always tasteless—this human nature to lift and look under, to seek the darker side of what people are capable of and what drives it? When it exists among us, next to us, are we somehow part of it? Is it exploitive? Revealing? Entertainment or education? And who gets to decide?

Is the protagonist of Robinson’s ghost tour more vulgar than the people who paid to spectate, for amusement, the grizzly details of a murder spree? Obviously, this scenario is an absurd exaggeration. But the additional layer makes that skit so sharp.

There is clearly an awful lot to unpack here as it is. And then there is Glensheen … the musical.

Wendy Lehr grabs the spotlight as an unnamed and “definitely not a real person” defense attorney. Photo by Rick Spaulding

A production of the History Theatre—written by Jeffrey Hatcher, with music and lyrics by Chan Poling, and directed by Ron Peluso—Glensheen the musical tells the story Glensheen the house won’t. The playbill states over 75,000 people have come to see this story since its debut in 2015.  The story about how Marjorie Caldwell, daughter of Elisabeth Congdon, allegedly orchestrated a murder plot motivated by inheritance and manipulated her husband, Roger Caldwell, into carrying it out.

I can’t help but wonder whether this show was a direct response to someone being shut down by a Glensheen tour guide. Whether it was a “You know what? Fine! We’ll make our own Gleensheen! With blackjack and …” and now we are all here, where silence and show tunes collide. Sure enough, both the avoidance by the estate to discuss the murders and the fact of this being a literal musical about them are addressed in the opening number. What the production has to say about anything beyond that, though, I am not entirely sure.

This is an excellent production, and that much is certain. The live five-piece orchestra is worth the cost of admission alone. The opening-night performances by the cast were stellar. The set, props, and lighting are beautiful, immersive and smartly used.

The presentation of the story, however, felt lost in its own hallways. Something was knocking through the walls beyond the bustle of living things on the stage—the intent to preserve and respect the reality of the tragedy—but like most messages from the other side, it didn’t quite come through. The weight of the subject matter and tone felt inconsistent and, yes, at times exploitative in a way that is difficult to sit with because it was clearly not meant to be exploitative.

Gary Briggle as a member of the ensemble cast Photo by Rick Spaulding

We’ve got a hand-puppet dog and a man who barks through it; sequin vests and jazz hands; IVs of alcohol. We’ve got the ensemble cast holding cardboard cut-out heads made from photographs of the actual jury involved in the actual murder trial. We’ve got a heartstring number about Velma Pietila being more than just a nurse, except the lyrics are about her being a nurse for 40 years and retiring to take care of her husband, and then going back to being a nurse. And we’ve got a song in which a character speedruns through numerous other horrors allegedly committed—including multiple additional murders—by reenacting with, and throwing to discard, dolls of the victims. The attempts to humanize the real people in this real story are clearly there, but inconsistent.

Roger Caldwell, the man who pleaded guilty to the physical murders, is presented as a dumb, lovelorn schmuck who is more victim than villain from the moment he appears on set. The man who beat one woman to death with a candlestick and smothered another in her own bed, with a lot to personally gain from it. Marjorie, the supposed mastermind behind the murders, is presented with attempts to establish a complicated character meriting sympathy and somehow, at the same time, portrayed as a woman of cartoonish, black-and-white villainy.

This was a charming show presented by a talented cast, but it ultimately felt disjointed and left me more perplexed than entertained. Was the spectacle of the production indulgent and vulgar, or was it in bounds as collectively agreed-upon entertainment? Maybe, in this telling, I got the ghost tour I wanted after all.

Glensheen is at the History Theatre through July 14, 2024.

Dane Stauffer as Roger, alongside Gary Briggle and Randy Schmeling. Photo by Rick Spaulding