Whodunit? That’s beside the deliciously campy point in Clue

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This article was published 20/10/2023 (1071 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An oafish army strongman, an industrious temptress, an abhorrent professor, a presumably mariticidal femme fatale, a nebbish nobody, and the elderly wife of a U.S. politician might not make the cut for your dream dinner party. However, they are the witless invitees to the garish estate of Mr. Boddy, who shamelessly threads the needle through the murder yarn at the heart of Clue, a farcical adaptation of the classic whodunit game that opens Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s mainstage season.

Set in the era of U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee, the colourful players — Prof. Plum (Derek Scott), Mrs. Peacock (Sharon Bajer), Mrs. White (Petrina Bromley), Miss Scarlet (Reena Jolly), Col. Mustard (Beau Dixon) and the anxious Mr. Green (Toby Hughes) — are more concerned with their bank accounts than their names cropping up in Red Channels.

Mr. Boddy has dirt on each of his tablemates, says the manor’s butler, Wadsworth (Jesse Gervais), and unless they continue to pay up, they’ll circle the drain toward both financial and social bankruptcy, a fate which to these self-motivated visitors seems worse than their own expiration: better dead than in the red.

When blood starts dripping in this co-production from RMTC and the Grand Theatre of London, Ont., the finger-pointing begins, sending these unusual suspects round and round through an undeniably entertaining charcuterie board game rich in ham, cheese and low-hanging fruit, but with a script in need of a touch more spice.

Writer Sandy Rustin based her treatment on Jonathan Lynn’s reimagined version of the board game, adapted into a film version featuring the chieftain of camp, Tim Curry, as the butler in residence. Renowned since its release in 1985 for its campiness and regarded, much like the Curry-starring The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as a paragon for misfits and outliers.

The conclusion Rustin’s script reaches is unpredictable, as promised by the whodunit premise, but the writer is often too beholden to a laugh-a-minute ideal, which is a promise nearly impossible to keep, even over a brisk 90-minute runtime.

That’s not to accuse director Dennis Garnhum of blind butchery. The former Grand artistic director is delicate with the knife, the wrench and the candlestick, co-ordinating a murderer’s row of solid comedic actors as they traverse designer Brian Perchaluk’s set.

Perchaluk’s mansion, which rotates, is a masterful feat of “storey-telling,” a two-floor-high smoking gun of a house with bullets loaded carefully into each chamber. On the first floor is the ominous front hallway, the potent dining room, the spotless kitchen and the zebra-skin-adorned lounge, which begins in black and white and is soon painted red all over. Upstairs, the stodgy study, the leafy conservatory and the billiard room await.

Each room is connected by doorways both seen and hidden, bringing to mind the best of Scooby-Doo and Agatha Christie, with a gang that can’t resist but to commit to their bits, running circles around the source material throughout the soirée.

It was Hughes, in the foyer, flattening his accordion body beneath a tumbling chandelier, playing Mr. Green like a cactus who can feel his own pricks. It was Bajer’s Mrs. Peacock, in the lounge, making out — tongue wagging — with a marble bust to distract a nosy cop from a dead body, as if that somehow weren’t even more suspect. It was Dixon, no matter which room he was in, delivering the colonel’s groaners with a straight face.

As Wadsworth, Gervais is at his best when he loosens his cummerbund, chewing up scenery exactly as he was instructed to do, even, at the end of the show, soliciting donations from audience members in the front row; weirdly, and sort of wonderfully, Gervais shares, through Wadsworth’s mouth, the URL for his own website.

But Clue is very much an ensemble piece, with much of its theatrical machinery hidden from plain sight. To focus only on the acting, the writing, or the nimble light work of Kevin Lamotte would be to ignore the behind-the-scenes crew working to keep the game afoot and suspicions atwirl.

Despite and because of its predilection for death, Clue makes for a lively evening, heavy on crime and delightfully light on reason.

That’s the way it happened, officer.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com