Want an Evening of Laughs? Go See Clue: Live on Stage

On stormy days that forced us to stay inside, my siblings and kids from the neighborhood would play board games. My favorite was CLUE, the classic whodunit that satisfied my childish powers of deduction. More than that, I could imagine a real mansion and fully-formed characters wielding full-size murder weapons. The perfect game for a dark and stormy day and an imaginative child.

That nostalgia drew me to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center to see the opening night of Clue: Live on Stage on Tuesday night, which happened to be a dark, blustery evening as a winter storm blew in. The storm raging outside Boddy Manor on stage and the cold wind outside created a warm atmosphere inside the PAC for the audience to settle in for an evening of fun entertainment.

Wadsworth the butler (Jeff Skowron), occasionally channeling Martin Short, is the perfect host for the outlandish cast of characters who find their way to Boddy Manor. Yvette the maid (Elisabeth Yancy) greets the guests with champagne as they are escorted to the lounge. They have each been invited to a dinner party by the mysterious – and absent – Mr. Boddy (Alex Syiek, who plays other characters). Each character is given a pseudonym. Colonel Mustard (David Hess) is first, followed by five-time widow and socialite Mrs. White (Donna English), whose husbands have all died under mysterious circumstances. Next, the flamboyant, teetotalling Mrs. Peacock (Joanna Glushak) enters, who repeatedly pulls a flask from her purse throughout the evening, getting increasingly intoxicated and even more flamboyant. Professor Plum (Jonathan Spivey) and Miss Scarlet (Christina Anthony) arrive together, but don’t know one another.

As the cast of strangers are moved to the dining room, it becomes apparent that the guests do have something in common – they all live in Washington DC and they all are being blackmailed by Mr. Boddy. Each guest is given a wrapped package with a potential murder weapon, which contain, of course, the candlestick, a lead pipe, a rope, a revolver, a wrench and a dagger.

And murders happen – six of them. “Three murders in three minutes,” Wadsworth says. “That’s our best record,” Colonel Mustard replies.

Doors slam, lights go on and off, secret passageways emerge, characters find themselves under dead bodies – the staging and choreography as the scenes change from room to room is phenomenal – and funny. Each cast member embodies their character’s personality in even the tiniest movement. Mr. Green’s frenetic responses to, well, everything, involve such flexibility that he appears to have no bones. Mrs. White moves gracefully as she delivers lines like, “Husbands should be like Kleenex, soft, strong and disposable.” Mrs. Peacock’s buttoned-up, false propriety unravels with each scene and with each sip from her flask. Wadsworth’s incredible rapid-fire delivery and physical comedy was perfectly paced. Colonel Mustard is reliably stiff and dimwitted, giving the rest of the cast an opportunity for eye-rolling fun. Miss Scarlet is the world-savvy and sexy madam, who recognizes Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard as clients. Plum is a perfectly pompous, yet insecure, professor.

As the complicated murders speed to a climax, each character gets to tell their version of whodunit. With each telling, the actors perform a physical rewind that gets faster and faster with every tale. Be ready for this scene. It will take you by surprise and, I promise, you won’t want to miss it.

I’m tempted to give away the end just because I used to relish declaring, “It was done by _____, in the ________, with the ______” when I was a child, but I won’t tell you what happens, or even who gets murdered. What I will tell you is that if you want an evening of madcap suspense and a lot of laughs, go see Clue this weekend.

Clue would make a fun date-night outing. (Valentine’s Day perhaps?) Fans of the board game, like me, and the 1987 film will enjoy this zany stage version. Teens may be aware of Clue’s cult following and want to see it for that reason. And if you have aspiring theater kids at your house, Clue is a master class in physical comedy and comedic timing.

Clue: Live on Stage Is playing at the Tulsa PAC Feb. 11-16. The performance runs 90 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are available at am.ticketmaster.com/tulsapac/buy