Brighton Year-Round 2024

Cluedo 2

JAS Theatricals, Gabriel Creative Partners, The Araca Group and Lively McCabe Entertainment

Genre: Comedy, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Theatre Royal Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

“This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard” says Hippolyta in the Dream. That might be music to veterans Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks who dare what few have done: take Sandy Rustin’s and Jonathan Lynn’s deliriously plotted and parti-coloured Cluedo, seen here in 2022.  And produced … Cluedo 2 which premieres at Theatre Royal Brighton directed by Mark Bell till March 23^rd  – with Ellie Leach and Jason Durr above the title.

 Those names might be all you need to know with a 12-strong cast of Miss Scarlett, Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, Mrs Peacock, Mrs White, Reverend Green, Mr Grey and ah, Mr Black. And um Wadsworth the actor playing a butler playing an actor. And one or several of them are about to murder one or several of the others. At least we know where we are.

However… you might know Mark Bell from The Play That Goes Wrong. It’s possible Bell’s taking this as The Sequel That Goes Wrong. It’s completely different to Cluedo. Only the names bear any resemblance to the original, or to Cluedo, though Gran and Marks pay homage to the concept. Set in 1968, when pop stars bought rambling mansions, it’s a world on the edge of its game, as Jon Fiber’s sound and pop arrangements remind us.

Designer David Farley’s back though with a wholly different set and costumes. So those fiendishly-wrought rows of coloured doors have been abandoned for Cluedo’s mansion (the original’s nearby in Rottingdean) and there’s much theatre business with descending props (Rosheen Mcnamee frantically working every which angle).

This open-plan concept allows us to imagine secret passages and the like: but we’d need different lighting. Jason Taylor’s is either sulphurous or plum-tinted with washes. It’s not fiendishly patterned into narrow shafts, given a storytelling chance.

Props are burdened with this. There’s desks, picture frames to hide behind or be disguised by as others walk past, sound systems, sofas, all sorts of fustian and a rather good library with steps.

Some of this works well, and in the short second act it comes together as Bell’s instinct for collapsing sets and people take over the elaborate ballet of unmasking for sheer dispatch. It’s when the play goes right. Elsewhere, I literally haven’t got a Cluedo.

If anyone saw Rory Mullarkey’s Mates in Chelsea at the Royal Court last year with that very interesting ‘Bedder’ or servant with her socialist ad-libs, you might get a clue as to the heroine – Mrs White… the cook. Serendipity…. Dawn Buckland leads this cast from the bottom, lowly, and always overlooked, but always somehow popping up if there’s trysts to be had. Buckland delights in a real character, a problem solver with nothing invested in the idiocies around her. So far as we know.

Jack Bennett’s Wadsworth with his Marvin-the-Paranoid-Android reluctance to be the butler he was born not to be, has the wackiest backstory and a secret police admirer who’s seen him in What the Butler Saw, when we get to that part of the play that really fizzes with references to Orton coming thick and fast to the 1967 film Games. As a butt he has some of the best sulk-offs and predictable gags in the show.

Former Corrie and Strictly star Leach makes an appealing Miss Scarlett in her stage debut, sliding from Northern soul accent to something else as she looks at an old portrait with a startling likeness. Durr’s Colonel Mustard makes a greedy hot dog of Presley’s Colonel, and Liam Horrigan preens cockneyish rock star Mr Black himself, then Mr Grey the arrogant Alpha director who has previous with Miss Scarlett and Mrs Peacock, as characters rise and fall.

Hannah Boyce’s haughty Mrs Peacock (married to Mr Black) is another whose way with accents is revealing. Her love-bitten Professor Plum (Edward Howells) seems more a tuned-in, turned-on, dropped-out “peace, man” academic – if he ever was one, drowned in psychedelic clothing. Reverend Green though arriving as a late guest is one of the dominating forces, and Gabriel Paul animates this West-Point-attired Vietnam-Vet-with-a-vengeance-streak with a touch of paranoid mission.

Others such as Tiwai’s Muza’s PC Silver, and Kara Alberts-Turner, Audrey Anderson and Henry Lawes all multi-role, including as a bear with no exit to pursue.

Ultimately the beauty of the ludicrous Cluedo lies in its matching colours, clothing and doors. The clothing’s still there (sometimes nicely coded) but here the desire to do something different with the set reflects the different writing talents.

Gran and Marks are great character-cum-situation-comedy-writers. Cluedo’s beauty relies on mechanical farce of a different order. Only when Gran and Marks take over with Bell for something of a hybrid from either, does it takes flight. Then it really does. The last ten minutes in particular are the silliest stuff: which is why it works. Soon more of the show will tighten and we’ll see that quality retro-fit.

A storm brews. ‘Twas a rough first night, well outside as it pelted rain. But how unravel the mysteries? Or this being 1968, Mysterons? It’s enough to make you reach for Captain Scarlet. And it’s early days yet for a show to come into its force.

Published March 20, 2024March 20, 2024 by Simon Jenner