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“My Son is Crazy…But Promising,” will be performed Saturday, Oct. 21, at 6:30 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 22, at 6:30 p.m., at the Westbrook Warren Congregational Church, 810 Main St., Westbrook.

Tickets are $25 per person, which includes dinner with a choice of pork loin, chicken cordon bleu or vegetarian lasagna, as well as salad, dessert and drinks.

To order, call 854-0499.

Bud Granger is a Hollywood horror-film screenwriter who buys a hotel in Arizona near an alleged gold mine, hoping he can escape the fast lane and possibly strike it rich.

He wants to find the gold and be a reclusive millionaire. One problem: His hotel is full of nuts who have also caught the gold bug. Another problem: He has a dead mobster shut up in a closet off the hotel’s lobby.

This is the premise of “My Son is Crazy…But Promising,” a play to be presented by the Westbrook Warren Congregational Church Oct. 21 and 22 as a dinner-theater production. The play is billed as a screwball whodunit with wacky characters and general mayhem.

“There’s nothing funnier than a dead guy on roller skates,” said Vince Knue, the director.

While comedic in nature, however, the play had some serious beginnings. For years, the Westbrook Warren Congregational Church has participated in a mission to Honduras through the Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ. The pastor, the Rev. Ed Delong himself, along with his family, has gone to Honduras twice. The mission has worked to give aid to the Honduran people, who live in a mountainous, impoverished nation with limited communication and infrastructure.

The purpose of the play, which is being sponsored by the Honduras Mission Team of the United Church of Christ organization, is to raise money for the Westbrook Warren Congregational Church as a payback for the help.

“It’s a way that we’re giving back to everyone who’s helped us,” said Cheryl Tibbetts, spokeswoman for the Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Once every two years, a mission sponsored by Tibbetts’ organization goes to Honduras to perform aid such as establishing medical clinics in the mountains, building houses and teaching English in schools. With each of these missions, a specialized team of medical, construction or teaching personnel goes along with it. Ed and Deb Delong and their two teenage children, Peter and Jocelyn, have gone twice, and are planning to go again in 2008.

According to Deb Delong, who is in the play, the church presented a successful dinner-theater play last summer to raise money for the Honduras mission. Some of the members of the Honduras Mission Team thought it might be a good idea to put on another one, this time to raise money for the Westbrook church.

Delong said Knue, a stage director with whom she has worked at the Lyric Music Theater in South Portland, agreed to direct the play, and it went from there. Of the 14 volunteer actors in the play, two are from the church while the other 12 are from the Lyric Music Theater.

“It’s a very funny farce,” said Ellen Maringione of Portland, who plays Susan Claypool. “I think the audience is really going to like it.”

The dinner-theater concept gives the audiences’ an experience different from a play where the actors remain on the stage. At this one, the actors will be coming and going through the tables all night long. The dining room, in fact, is part of the staging, representing the dining room at the hotel. The actual stage is the hotel’s lobby.

“Dinner theater is more intimate. We’re walking in and out,” said Alex Pratt, who lives in Saco and runs Pratt Insurance Agency in Westbrook. The diners will be turning around in their seats to see actors walking and talking up to the stage, said Pratt, who plays dead mobster Oysters Rockefeller.

“I hope the smell of the food doesn’t make me hungry while I’m on stage,” said Kate Davis of Biddeford, who plays hopeful starlet Chi Chi Vazoom.

“My Son is Crazy…But Promising” was written by Tim Kelly.

Tickets can be ordered by calling 854-0499.

Funny play with serious beginnings