Melbourne Reviews

Cluedo (subtitled: “The Hilarious Whodunnit Play”) is an energetically performed ensemble farce that either toyed with surprising us, or missed opportunities to do so. This is likely to limit the show’s appeal for fans of the genre’s modern form.

Originally Cluedo (or Clue in North America) was a children’s board game, first manufactured in Britain in 1949. The game featured characters with colours for surnames, gathered together in a manor, trying to determine which of them has committed a murder, where, and how. Clearly (and somewhat disturbingly in retrospect) there’s long been a market for “murder as entertainment”, which may explain the spinoff Hollywood film Clue (1985). This black comedy under-performed financially, but earned cult regard for its witty dialogue.

Some more-recent iterations of “Whodunnit” films, like the successful Knives Out (2019), have kept the commitment to snappy lines. The script for this Cluedo gambles that a sharp wit isn’t an essential feature of the genre’s continuing success.

We’re off to a promising start as a series of dinner guests arrive in turn at Boddy Manor to be greeted by the butler Wadsworth (Grant Piro). All were invited by the wealthy owner, and encouraged to use (lore-faithful) pseudonyms to preserve anonymity. The set features by Designer James Browne quickly grab our attention. This isn’t just for the To The Manor Borne vibes of wallpapered rooms busy with oil paintings and animal taxidermy. Notably, a room would expand to admit a recent arrival, and then retreat from the entrance hall.

The effect could make us recall the moving staircases in Harry Potter’s world, and think we’re heading for magical realism. That was hoping for too much irreverence towards the genre’s origins. But the design was a clever way to speed up, and mostly keep the stage free for, Wadworth’s greeting of each newly arrived guest. This allowed each to give their private explanation of why they were on the guest list.

There would be a lot of running around, going through doors, and shrieking in the next 80-or-so minutes. As the body count grew, our interest could move in the opposite direction.

Notable attributes of the guests – Mrs White (Rachael Beck), Reverend Green (Laurence Boxhall), Miss Scarlett (Olivia Deeble), Professor Plum (David James), Mrs Peacock (Genevieve Lemon), and Colonel Mustard (Adam Murphy) – were substantially assisted by Browne’s costumes. However, maybe that’s one benefit of Luke Joslin’s direction; it would have been less easy to accept murders as a source of comedy should we have had too much regard for the various unfortunate characters.

All the lighting cues were sharp, cast movements were precise, dramatic stings arrived as needed, and there weren’t so many instances of lines being lost by being directed upstage. However, I formed the general impression that the style of Sandy Rustin’s dialogue is a bit too vintage. This is surprising given the play’s first production was in 2022, in London.

For example, a setup about Professor Plum working in the public service got the laugh well before the obvious punchline was dropped. A line from the generally anxious Reverend Green – I’m not corrupt, I’m a conservative! – missed an opportunity to get a laugh from those aware of Tory behaviour in the Boris Johnston era. And it would have been nice to see Mrs Peacock’s aggressive soup slurping be more than a stylistic blip.

As the centre of the work, Piro did well in marshalling the guests, creating misdirections, and featuring in some of escalations of the action that changed the show’s rhythm. These had mixed results. One extended summary of the murders (in what is not an overly complicated story) gave Piro the chance to work hard in recapping the movements that led to various deaths. At the end, one character retorted something like “Well, what does that prove?” Not much, except that frenzied activity, even if very well coordinated, isn’t fooling the characters, nor the genre fans in the audience.

There’s nothing wrong with light entertainment, but maybe it shouldn’t inflate expectations too much with its subtitle. Compared to the well-regarded Whodunnit films around, this version couldn’t give us as much bang for our pistol, wrench, or candlesticks.