Brief Run for Living Room Theater in El Cerrito Hills

Do you know the detective mystery involving the ancient Japanese sun goddess and a cat?

If you were in the right living room in the El Cerrito hills Saturday afternoon, you'd know the whodunit ending.

It was the mirror. Only this time, nobody was hurt.

The story was told in an informal, one-time "reading/performance" of a play titled, "The Cat, the Sun, and the Mirror," staged in the living room of Tom and Leslie Goldstein.

Reading an abridged version of the script was its co-author, Robert Anderson (also known as Flash), who wrote the play with former New York State Assemblyman Edward Sullivan. Anderson's wife, Rose Marie Wright (also known as Big Rose), held up illustrations of the scenes while the script was read.

Anderson, who's an old friend of Tom Goldstein and who lives in Pennsylvania with Wright, said the play is based on the ancient Japanese myth about the sun goddess Amaterasu. According to legend, Amaterasu plunged the world in darkness when she hid in a cave and was lured back out again thanks to a trick with a mirror.

Anderson said he added the cat sleuth because he likes detective stories.

The play was first performed by the New York State Theatre Institute in 2006. It will soon be published as a book with illustrations by Hannah Way Rawe.