The list of adaptations between books films and plays is seemingly endless and, on occasion, a play has been adapted back from films that were originally a play. It is less common, however, to find a play adapted from a film that was based on a board game. Confused? Hopefully you will be!
The popular board game Cluedo has been the subject of a plethora of adaptations into other media, but the most popular stage version is the one performed here by Chester Little Theatre, adapted by Sandy Rustin in 2017 from Jonathan Lynne’s 1985 movie ‘Clue’ (the name by which the game is known in the US).
There are a great many similarities between Clue(do) and Neil Simon’s 1976 ‘Murder By Death’, in that it takes the ever popular locked-room murder mystery formula and sends it up in gleeful farce. A motley selection of guests assemble in a remote country house, all apparently strangers to each other and invited by a mysterious host. Welcomed by the hired help – a butler, cook and maid – they gradually determine that each of them has a nefarious connection to the host, Mr Boddy and, when Boddy soon becomes a corpse, and they find out that they cannot leave the house, the fun really begins.
Director Lexie Fox-Hutchings has assembled a splendid 11-strong cast for this production, and while the houseguests may have monochrome names, they are all performed with colorful enthusiasm. Alex Wight as Wadsworth the butler acts as a sort of emcee in the performance, helping to narrate the tale, although many of the individual characters also get to deliver passages of dialogue with tongue-in-cheek asides.
Lilian Chapman has done a splendid job in costume design, remaining just on the right side of realism with the name-appropriate attire, and Tony Kemp has provided a versatile set which serves well as all the various rooms in Boddy Manor.
With a script that is credited to ‘Sandy Rustin, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Lynne, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price’ there is some sense that the work has been written by a committee, and both the plot and dialogue are unevenly penned in places. It is therefore a work that stands or falls on the strength of the individual character roles rather than on a cohesive piece of storytelling. Luckily Fox-Hutchings and her cast have the measure of this, and succeed in creating some wonderfully over-the-top caricatures, which is exactly what this sort of thing needs, as it fires its lampooning broadside at the clichés of the traditional murder mystery.
Continuing CLT’s current season of wall to wall comedy, Cluedo is a delightfully daft and hugely entertaining evening’s theatre, and it is a perfect segue into the rapidly approaching panto season.
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| The cast and crew of Cluedo - Rehearsal photograph by Stephen Cain Photography |
This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool
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