Carmine’s has spent over 30 years feeding tourists and regulars family-style portions of chicken parm big enough for a table of six, ever since restaurateur Artie Cutler opened the original Upper West Side location in 1990 and expanded to a bigger, grander outpost in Times Square just two years later.
These days, one room inside that same restaurant is doing something the rest of the building isn’t: staging a nightly “murder.“
Speakeasy, Die Softly has quietly become one of the longest-running secrets in Times Square, an immersive 1920s dinner theater experience that turns Carmine’s famous Sinatra Room into a Prohibition-era speakeasy, complete with flappers, mobsters, a live jazz singer, and a killer hiding somewhere in the room.
11 September 2026 19:00 + more dates
It’s been running since August 2024, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.
It’s one of the most fun nights out in New York right now, and we have all the details on how to get involved!
The company behind it landed a deal with Jason Blum
The show comes from The Murder Mystery Company and American Immersion Theater, the same production house that walked onto ABC’s Shark Tank in 2024 and walked off with a partnership most theater companies would kill for.
Founder Scott Cramton pitched the company dressed as a murder detective, and Blumhouse Entertainment CEO Jason Blum bought in on the spot, striking a deal for a stake in the company, according to IMD.
Blum’s reasoning was simple: he figured horror movie fans and immersive theater fans were basically the same audience. He wasn’t wrong. In the months following the deal, the company expanded to 25 venues nationwide and sold out more than 30 shows.
Speakeasy, Die Softly is one of the crown jewels of that expansion.
It’s since won Best New Immersive Show, hosted over 7,000 guests, and earned the title of Times Square’s only continuously running immersive theatrical experience.
Inside Lou Zar’s speakeasy
The setup is simple, and the story goes rogue fast.
Guests slip into Lou Zar’s speakeasy, a fictional Prohibition-era club where the jazz is loud, the drinks are dressed up as “soda pop,” and the games at the tables are just risky enough to feel dangerous.
A sultry club singer and her pianist keep the room moving between courses, right up until the feds show up sniffing around and a body drops.
From there, the night turns into a full-blown detective operation, and the guests are the detectives. The cast plants clues throughout the room, guests interrogate each other and the suspects, and by the end of the night, everyone at the table has a working theory about who did it, because the killer really could be anyone at the table, including you.
The night wraps with its own version of an awards ceremony, handing out titles for Best Dressed, Best Actor or Actress, and Detective of the Night, which means showing up in your best 1920s glad rags isn’t just for the photos. It might actually win you something.
The food is doing just as much work as the plot
This isn’t dinner theater where the food is an afterthought squeezed in between scenes.
It’s Carmine’s, and the family-style feast that built the restaurant’s reputation shows up in full force:
- Caesar salad to start
- Penne a la vodka
- Chicken Parmigiana
- Shrimp scampi
- Tiramisu and cannoli to finish
It’s the same red-sauce, oversized-portion, Rat Pack-era energy that turned Carmine’s into a celebrity magnet after Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin started showing up as regulars.
The Sinatra Room itself leans into that legacy hard, dressed up with vintage theater posters and marquee-style lighting that make it feel like its own tiny Broadway set tucked inside a bigger restaurant.
How to get in on it
Speakeasy, Die Softly runs regularly at the Sinatra Room inside Carmine’s Times Square, with performances Monday and Friday evenings, two shows on Saturday, and a Sunday early-evening slot.
Given that it’s already outlasted just about every other immersive show to open in Times Square since 2024, waiting around probably isn’t the move.
🎟️ Grab tickets to Speakeasy, Die Softly here before your table gets cast as suspects too.