Board game turned cult comedy “Clue” makes hysterical jump to Mercury Theater stage
Murder mysteries never go out of season, but there’s no better moment to launch the Mercury Theater’s stage adaptation of the vintage board game turned cult comedy film “Clue” than right around Halloween.
The Chicago premiere featured the requisite spooky mansion setting, complete with secret passageways, to spark a maze of whodunits by a dinner party’s worth of kooky characters, all of whom are all being blackmailed over scandal-worthy indiscretions and desperately attempting to keep their secrets silent.
Mark David Kaplan stars as Wadsworth, who greets concerned guests one by one on a dark and stormy night, including Mrs. White (McKinley Carter), Professor Plum (Andrew Jessop), Mr. Green (Kelvin Roston, Jr.), Miss Scarlet (Erica Stephan), Mrs. Peacock (Nancy Wagner) and Colonel Mustard (Jonah Winston).
Every single one of them, along with maid Yvette (Tiffany T. Taylor) and a dynamite ensemble, are superb at bringing even the slightest nuances out of their respective roles, mostly mirroring the movie, outside of slight changes to accommodate space constraints, such as a slow motion semi-crash of a chandelier as the shows climaxes.
However, there are endless square feet of laughs while being forced to work together in order to emerge alive, plus mounds of slapstick and slips of the tongue that ultimately paint the players in a loveable light, despite each having the capacity to kill for their causes.
Of course, a lot of the blame could be put on their host for handing out weapons of various stripes, which are frequently dropped, lost, exchanged and pointed in blame, cleverly adding to the absurdity.
Even the multiple endings remain intact as audiences ponder if the culprit was Mrs. White with the rope in the billiard room, Mr. Green with the led pipe in the lounge, Mrs. Peacock with the knife in the kitchen and so on.
There’s only one way to find out, but after 90 straight minutes without an intermission and rarely a scene without at least a chuckle, it’s more than worth seeing every possible guess in person.
“Clue” continues at the Mercury Theater through January 1. For additional details, visit MercuryTheaterChicago.com.