It’s a darkish and stormy night time (isn’t it at all times in a traditional homicide thriller?) in October 1968.
Annabel Scarlett (Ellie Leach) is at Graveney Manor, Cliffhanger, West Sussex, to renovate light and failing rock star Rick Black’s ( Liam Horrigan) crumbling pile underneath the watchful eye of his spouse Mrs. Peacock (Hannah Boyce) (nonetheless utilizing her earlier married identify). Old band mates Professor Alex Plum (Edward Howells) and Reverend Hal Green (Gabriel Paul) arrive on the doorstep lured by Black who’s seeking to revive the outdated band and hopefully his funds. Added in to the combo are Rick’s manipulative supervisor Colonel Mustard (Jason Durr), meddling house-keeper Mrs. White (Dawn Buckland) and actor Wadsworth perennially solid as a butler (Jack Bennett). All the acquainted components of the traditional board recreation come to life on stage in Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s Cluedo 2: The Next Chapter, and nothing and no-one is sort of because it appears.
Marks and Gran’s script writing pedigree is nearly unmatched, with Birds of a Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart, The New Statesman and Shine on Harvey Moon to call a number of. This coupled with director Mark Bell, whose personal pedigree contains the worldwide smash The Play That Goes Wrong. It can also’t harm that the board recreation on which it’s all primarily based has offered over 150 million copies and the general public’s endless need for nostalgia. It has a lot promise, however does it ship?
To be clear that is old-school farce and never a traditional homicide thriller, so these hoping for a creepy and intelligent Agatha Christie model crime drama can be sorely disillusioned.
The first act is gradual to construct and the heightened, virtually panto-style of performing takes a little bit of warming to (they do stray into precise pantomime tropes within the second act). The second act fares higher because the tempo picks up, however there’s a repeated and extended chase round the home scene that stretches the already skinny plot even thinner. You can see that director Bell has tried to include components of the profitable Play That… sequence but it surely isn’t as intelligent or authentic as that.
There is enjoyable available although: in seeing how designer David Farley has realised the rooms and recognizing references to the notorious weapons. There’s phrase play, slapstick, ventriloquism (one of many funniest scenes), a operating gag about Al Green and loads of lyrics from a few of the greatest hits of the 60s to establish. The precise ending too is extremely entertaining.
The backdrop of David Farley’s set is an image of the manor home superimposed over the traditional recreation board. The furnishings and set dressing is danced out and in by the solid and whereas amusing at first, it begins to really feel like time filling by the second act.
The stand-outs of the solid are Jack Bennett who’s pitch-perfect as actor/mistaken-for-the-butler Wadsworth whose timing and traditional comedian performing work ideally with the fabric and Dawn Buckland because the sassy house-keeper Mrs. White, with a sack stuffed with one-liners and some secrets and techniques underneath her pinafore.
Many, who want for his or her comedy with a whiff of nostalgia will adore it. It very a lot feels as if the writing is from one other period, and never the Nineteen Sixties wherein it’s set, these in search of one thing cleverer is perhaps greatest to look else the place.
Runs till 8 June 2024 | Image: Alastair Muir
