Meet Black Widow Betty from The Mafioso Murders

Andrea Molberg

There will be lots of clues, surprises, and fun at Community Circle Players’ new dinner theatre show The Mafioso Murders. In the cast of the mystery dinner production at SaddleBrooke One’s Vistas April 8-11 and at SaddleBrooke TWO’s MountainView Ballroom April 12-14 is Kathleen “Casey” Domalewski playing Black Widow Betty.

Seventeen years ago, Casey moved to SaddleBrooke to fulfill a lifelong longing for sun. Born and raised in Jersey City/Hoboken, she has been married for 25 years to a former Jersey City firefighter. Casey was a nursing instructor and still provides private duty nursing. Though she went to a performance grammar school, she didn’t return to theater until she got involved in SaddleBrooke at the urging of her husband and because PrimeTime director Suzy Shear gave her a part she “couldn’t refuse.”

During her teens, Casey says she was so tall and ungainly that she took up competitive dance skating to move more gracefully. This led to several years as part of a New York dance troop and much later a two-year stint as the president of the SaddleBrooke Ballroom Dance Club. A hip injury put an end to her dancing days. She says she’s truly happiest when packing a suitcase, speaks just enough Mandarin to get herself in trouble, and is ready to travel “any time, any place.”

Casey describes her husband as “the wind beneath my wings, who always supports all my crazy endeavors.” She is a voracious reader, a demon poker player, and very active in her church. She will spend an entire day on Skype with her granddaughter whenever she has a snow day.

Casey has been in six SaddleBrooke productions plus one choir or another since Brownies, but dinner theater has been a whole new experience for her. She thinks the intimacy of being surrounded by the audience brings an entirely new dimension to an actor’s performance. Though her favorite SaddleBrooke role was in The Sunshine Boys, she believes she is best remembered for a small part in The House of Tomorrow playing a woman desperately trying to refill a prescription while on the telephone with Medicare.