Impressed by Agatha Christie-style drawing room homicide mysteries, the board recreation “Clue” has been a cultural staple ever since 1949. (It was initially created in England by Anthony E. Pratt as “Cluedo,” the identify by which the sport remains to be identified exterior of North America.)
The play “Clue,” now onstage at San Francisco Playhouse, is a few steps faraway from the Hasbro board recreation. Written by Sandy Rustin (with extra materials by Hunter Foster and Eric Value), it’s a really devoted adaptation of the 1985 cult basic Paramount Footage film primarily based on the sport.
This stage model premiered in 2020 at Cleveland Play Home and was named by American Theatre journal because the third most produced play in U.S. theaters this season, other than Shakespeare.
Hillbarn Theatre did the play in Foster Metropolis final June, Heart Repertory Firm produced it in Walnut Creek in October, and a highschool version has been making the rounds for just a few years. Except for the supply materials, it’s unrelated to the stage adaptation of the film that San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre created again in 2011.
It’s applicable that SF Playhouse’s staging is a part of the corporate’s twentieth anniversary season. Virtually each single member of the superb forged has been in previous Playhouse productions, and so they appear to be having a blast enjoying the outsize suspects and victims on this homicide thriller farce.
The setup is so simple as the plot is convoluted. A bunch of eccentric strangers has been invited to a cocktail party in an outdated mansion. Their mysterious host, Mr. Boddy, has been blackmailing every of them about their deep darkish secrets and techniques.
Renee Rogoff is chilly and evasive because the genteel Mrs. White, 5 occasions widowed beneath suspicious circumstances. Michael Ray Correctly’s splendidly deadpan Colonel Mustard is all the time hilariously sluggish on the uptake. Stacy Ross exudes comical bewilderment as Mrs. Peacock, a prim and garrulous senator’s spouse.
Greg Ayers is especially hysterical because the jumpy and clumsy Mr. Inexperienced, beneath menace of dropping his authorities job for being homosexual. Courtney Walsh is a swaggeringly defiant Miss Scarlet, a infamous madam, and Michael Gene Sullivan is delightfully dotty because the pipe-clenching lothario Professor Plum. They’re costumed by Alice Ruiz in colourful outfits applicable to the character names.
Dorian Lockett, who performed Colonel Mustard within the Heart Rep manufacturing, impishly orchestrates the motion because the butler Wadsworth with a suave air of coy knowingness.
Additionally caught up within the whirl are Margherita Ventura’s thickly accented French maid Yvette with secrets and techniques of her personal, Eiko Yamamoto as a cleaver-wielding cook dinner, Jamiel St. Rose as a perplexed police officer, and Will Springhorn Jr. because the pompous Mr. Boddy and a wide range of different roles.
Rustin’s script hews very carefully to the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn (who was additionally the film’s director), with added gags right here and there and extra exposition concerning the Pink Scare of the Nineteen Fifties. There are additionally plenty of references to the board recreation, its former writer Parker Brothers (now absorbed into Hasbro) and its signature approach of figuring out culprits: “It’s simply the maid within the corridor with a champagne cork.”
SF Playhouse producing director Susi Damilano leans into the goofiness of the farce in her sprightly staging that includes an entire lot of working far and wide in clumps and pairs in a wide range of ludicrous gaits. The choreography is by Nicole Helfer, solely often involving dancing per se, and Michael Holland’s vigorous music helps set the tempo. Heather Kenyon’s set of the grand entryway is deliciously versatile, with many doorways to run out and in of, a few of which fold out into different rooms.
Attendees ought to plan to reach early for a textual content message-guided preshow thriller expertise within the foyer created by Matthew Stein, who additionally performed violin in final 12 months’s SF Playhouse manufacturing of “Indecent.”
A number of the new jokes are higher than others, and there are occasional moments the place the pacing might stand to be tightened up. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasant romp that lets the standard suspects unfastened to knock ’em lifeless.
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and observe him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.
‘CLUE’
By Sandy Rustin, primarily based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, offered by San Francisco Playhouse
By means of: April 22
The place: San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Publish St., San Francisco
Operating time: 95 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $15-$100; 415-677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org