Very little is known of this mystical wanderer. (Yes, were talking about the odd looking chap at the top of the page!) When detected, Riddlesbrood can be found wearing a bizarrely spookish purple coat, dark violet spectacles, a velvet top hat, and carrying a strange ornate cane!  Very little about this intriguing fellow is known, except that he immigrated to the United States from Prussia sometime in the early 1800's. Some have said that he is immortal, some say he died long ago, some even go so far as to proclaim that he does not exist at all! Still others whisper that he is nothing but a cheezy mascot played by Ryan Long, the founder of the troupe. We will let you be the judge.

Producer, director, writer, and actor Ryan Long began his love affair with show business when he was in his teens as a lighting tech for the 1,000 capacity venue The Showplace in the 1980s—lighting such musical groups as Cuban jazz artist Paquito D’Rivera, Peter Noone from Herman’s Hermits, country singer Mel Tillis, and Sha Na Na. Later, Long began to play bit parts and work tech at Elaine’s Dinner Theatre in Cape May, NJ, during the summers. After high school, Ryan Long entered the U.S. Army and joined 14th Military Intelligence stationed in Tacoma, Washington. In his off duty hours, Long appeared in many productions as a member of the Lakewood Players, a community theatre group where he learned the nuts and bolts of the acting craft. Long appeared in plays such as The Diary of Anne Frank, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Jackett, and Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Not only did Long regularly take on acting roles, he also ran lighting and sound tech for numerous productions from the mainstream theatrical catalog to the avant-guard, including The Nerd by Larry Shue. After his discharge from the army, Ryan Long was a full time actor at Elaine’s Dinner Theatre for three years while attending Rowan University, where he wrote and directed one-act plays and was involved extensively with the lab theatre. While at Rowan, Long reconceptualized the evil and comic role of Jonathan Brewster, popularized by Boris Karloff, in the Joseph Kesselring play Arsenic and Old Lace. In 1999, with some actor friends from college, Ryan Long established a traveling theatrical company that basically consisted of friends getting together, writing scripts and acting in their own creations. Eventually, these friends became Riddlesbrood. Led by Ryan Long, the group put on productions in Collingswood, NJ, and other South Jersey locations, then landing comfortably in residence at The Show Barn in historic Smithville near Atlantic City. For three and a half years, Long produced, wrote, and directed such original and popular dinner theatre productions as Revenge of the Jersey Devil, Meet Me at the Malt Shop (a send-up of the 1950s), Trouble in Flicker City (satire of the 1930s film industry and murder mystery), and a funky version of A Christmas Carol. Now Ryan Long and Riddlesbrood have moved to the City of Burlington in the midst of its revitalization, and from this home base, Long is currently producing shows in downtown Burlington and at Braddock’s Tavern, experimenting with a new kind of dinner theatre, a dramatic new genre that is audience driven and totally unique.