Cluedo

It’s a dark and stormy night.  Thunder rumbles.  Lightning flashes.  The curtains billow at palatial Boddy Mansion.  The French maid Yvette (Lib Campbell) ties the curtains back – with a flirtatious shimmy to the audience.  The Cook (Octavia Barron-Martin) strides back and forth, preparing for the arrival of the six mystery guests invited by the mysterious Mr Boddy.  Butler Wadsworth (Grant Piro) greets each as they arrive.  And Grant Piro, who can do anything, is having more fun than legally allowed.

If you’ve played the board game or seen the 1985 movie (or indeed remember the 1992-1993 Australian television game show adaptation), you’ll recognise the six characters (or suspects) at once.

Cluedo is a country house who-dun-nit (a parody of country house à la Agatha Christie, say, mysteries) but played here mostly as a fast-moving farce with rapid fire dialogue peppered with jokes (some funny, some wince-making), double entendres and wilful misunderstandings. 

To make things a little easier, each of the characters – although they’re not characters – more ‘archetypes’ or deliberate cliches - is identified with an appropriate colour.  There’s dim-witted and pompous Colonel Mustard (Adam Murphy) in yellow-ish uniform.  Multiple divorcee Mrs White (Rachel Beck) in black and white.  Flamboyant and ditzy Mrs Peacock (Genevieve Lemon – thoroughly enjoying the role) as her name.  Timid Reverend Green (Laurence Boxall) in a green coat.  Sexy good time girl Miss Scarlett (Olivia Deeble) in scarlet.  Weighty and dignified (at first) Professor Plum (David James) in an appropriate waistcoat. 

Wadsworth, the butler, imperious but insolent, is dressed as a butler – of course.  It is he who drives the bewildering plot, all in the name of solving the mystery.  But as a play, Cluedo is a who-dunnit in which who did do it is of quite secondary importance. 

There is a plot and there is development.  The frenetic situation moves in six parts, each separated by highly melodramatic music (Sean Peter), blackouts and brilliant lighting effects from Jasmine Rizk.  Because it’s a play extra characters (an imposter, uniform and plain clothes police, a singing telegram delivery person) and extra twists have been added – after all, five writers are credited.

But by the time of the final reveals, I doubt that anyone really understands – or cares – who killed whom or with what, or where – or what this has been all about.  What it is all about involves the creakiest of contrivances that need quite some explaining.  The murders (there are several) are merely the conceit that keeps the character relentlessly on the move – either in searching or in flight. 

James Browne’s ingenious set is truly a hero of this production.  It’s a miracle of invention, with moving parts that provides the stately home’s great Hall, the library, the dining room, as well as corridors, and other hidden rooms – and thus many clever opportunities for movement and doors that give us echoes of Feydeau-like farcical situations of failed evasions and false identities.  It’s those elements, rather than any ‘mystery’, which contributes much to the considerable and enjoyable fun of the evening. 

In keeping with the farcical style, director Luke Joslin elects for full-on no-doubt-about-it this-is-a-comedy.  He weaves in some lovely sight gags, but the skilled and experienced cast each plays their character from their first entrance at high volume and what might be considered over-acting in other circumstances; they eschew much of light and shade and go for the emphatic style, frequently breaking the fourth wall to include us in the throw-away gags.  The exception is Laurence Boxhall’s Reverend Green - the most ‘real’ of the cast, until he gets the opportunity to go for broke with some inspired and hilarious slapstick.