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Pictures: Alastair Muir Cluedo2: The Next Chapter The Alexandra Theatre **** For students of pathology this is an absolute goldmine. Shakespeare could only manage eight deaths on stage in his best body count effort, Hamlet, while Cluedo 2 gets us up to nine with stabbings, stranglings, brains bashed out by a spanner, or was it a wrench, shootings and, just for variety, a quick acting, or, at least it was meant to be, poison. Based loosely on the board game, invented, incidentally, by Birmingham’s Anthony E. Pratt in Kings Heath in 1943, we have a country house, with all the game’s requisite rooms and characters, at least in name, and all the weapons of the game from rope to candlesticks, including a length of (exhaust) pipe. The game has moved from the country house set of Agatha Christie's era to the swinging 60s with Dr Black now rock legend Rick Black, rich, famous and . . . broke, with a new album almost completed on tape in his home studio, all set to see his star rise again. Which is why he is played with manic arrogance by Liam Horrigan. That’s all you need to know as he is called to that great arena in the sky harly before we get comfortable in our seats. Mind you, whoever killed him, wasn’t taking chances, three methods we know of and no doubt the post mortem would discover more. That leaves us with the suspects, starting with his manager Colonel Eugene Mustard, a sort of cross between Cols Sanders and Parker played, y’all, by Jason Durr who seems to be having the time of his finger lickin’ good life.
Then there is Wadsworth, the butler, who is not a butler but an actor playing a butler as Jack Bennet, the actor playing Wadsworth the actor playing a butler keeps telling us. Then we have Black’s wife, Mrs Emerald Peacock, played with haughty demeanour by Kara Alberts-Turner who has kept the name of her last husband, which, purely by coincidence slips her into the Cluedo character listing of names. Prof Plum, played with a struggling intellect by Edward Howells, is Alex Plum, given the nomenclature prof as he has no qualifications whatsoever and is Rick’s roadie come sound engineer, but really is just an old friend and hanger on. He also has the hots for Mrs Peacock which may or may not be significant. Adding sexual alure, with a fake northern accent so people will think she knows The Beatles, is Hannah Boyce as Annabel Scarlet, the so-called interior designer brought in by Rick to remodel his 17 bedroom stately pile Graveny Manor . . . or at least that’s the story. Just saying. And as a sort of fixture in that she came with the house, we have Dawn Buckland as the cook, Mrs White, who seems to pop up in every nook and cranny and knows all the secrets of the ghostly pile. A latecomer to the party is Gabriel Paul as Rick’s old partner and songwriter the Rev Hal Green, not Al Green, the real Al being one of the great songwriters and soul singers of all time, but Hal, Hal not Al, which is a running joke along with the butler who is not a butler. Adding to the plot (apparently there is one) we have a police sergeant and another Wadsworth, possibly played by Horrigan moonlighting as his character is resting between lives, as well as a film director, until he is stabbed, with an ensemble of two, Audrey Anderson and Henry Lawes, hovering around the wings amid extra characters with Tiwai Muza making the best of investigating officer PC Silver, with IO Silver giving us a Lone Ranger gag.
And there are some really good and funny gags in the script from Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran (Birds of a Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and Dreamboats and Petticoats), throwaway laugh out loud lines and daft puns, and some glorious running gags. Wadsworth taking the honours here with his not a butler lines and then a pedantic who and whom section which will swell the hearts of students of Henry Watson Fowler. Hal, not Al, Green has his moments as well, confused by English words for things with different names in America, and difficulty with English colloquialisms – who is Rosie Lea by the way . . . We even drift into panto as the cast, or, to be more accurate, those not yet murdered gather in the kitchen for tea with Mrs White popping up with various cakes and delicacies at inappropriate, or appropriate as far as the gags go, times, announcing items such as tart, knob . . . of butter, spotted dick. You get the idea and ok, its more Donald McGill than Oscar Wilde, but it is still very clever and funny. It doesn’t all work though and some set ups fall a bit flat making this a bit of a curate’s egg production, laughs, groans and Huh?s in equal measure. The first Cluedo had a brilliant set with fold in fold out rooms, this, designed by David Farley, uses roll on, roll off doors and furniture, along with drop down windows to create rooms, and moving hand held pictures and picture frames in a sort of stylised choreography to indicate the long trek between rooms. Tamsin Rose as movement director, has devised some complex set ups for chases, creating a dining scene with chairs assembled in a line, and regularly cast members, or at least their heads, popping out all over the stage, all in all making scene changes almost balletic. Jon Fiber’s sound and Jason Taylor’s lighting add to the clever technicals with fuses blowing, slaps – Mrs White has a vicious right hook – and all those things which are enjoyed but hardly noticed, unless they go wrong. The plot is, should we say, somewhat simplistic, which is a posh way of saying it pushes logic and credulity a long way, but the cast fill the stage with infectious enthusiasm taking the audience along with them. Neil Simon it ain’t, subtle gave it wide berth, and it is nearer Cbeebies for adults than Chekhov, but what you do get is a delightfully daft comedy with guaranteed laughs. Not so much a whodunit as a whocareswhodunit cos, after all, we all had a good laugh. Directed by Mark Bell (The Play That Goes Wrong, A Comedy About a Bank Robbery) the cast will be dying to see you to 27-07-24. Roger Clarke 23-07-24 |
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