Get a ‘Clue’: Fast-Paced Farce Goes to Garvin

The 1985 film adaptation of Clue has become a beloved cult classic over the years for its clever way of turning the board game into a movie. Not so much the poorly-conceived 1997 Off-Broadway adaptation Clue: The Musical that planted the dagger firmly into the heart of the madcap murder mystery farce. Fortunately Sandy Rustin’s tried her hand at making the movie into a non-musical play in 2017, which was revised just three years later, rescuing the story for the stage. The equity tour stopped at the Granada Theatre in November 2024, and now SBCC’s Theatre Group is taking on the winning translation of the film’s farce and the game’s whodunit suspense that blends both into a high-energy show with rapid-fire dialogue, breakneck pacing, and smart set design. 

Amy Love, the founder and artistic director of Lights Up! Teen Theatre Company, is directing the show in one of her first forays since forming the teen group almost a decade ago, helming a cast of a dozen local and regional actors who will take on Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet, as well as Wadsworth the butler and Yvette the maid, among others. Get a good night’s sleep before coming to the theater. 

Q. Clue is incredibly fast-paced and a whole lot of fun, but not a theatrical piece that goes deep into character development. Why did it appeal to you to direct as your first non-Lights Up! show with one of the established companies in town?

A. I’m a theatrical gal, one of those directors who really enjoys farce and I love staging it. Clue is just a hoot. It’s very funny. But I beg to disagree that there’s not a lot of character development. Every single character has got a deep, dark secret. So we spent time talking about who they are in their real life and how they cover up their big, deep, dark secrets. We’ve had a lot of fun creating beef between the characters and all their backstories. There’s a lot of character work. 

The play is very tightly written with careful timing. How are you able to put your stamp on it?

I’ve done some inventive staging. And with the character work we talked about, I don’t want it to be just a two-dimensional blank, like people just running through their lives really quickly and slapping each other. I want it to be something that went a little deeper, just to enrich the comedy experience. I’m trying to develop jokes based on the characters and not just on the situation. It’s a way to put a unique mark on it. 

I saw Clue at the Granada in 2024, and with all the fast changes, doors slamming, people coming in and out, it seems very chaotic and a challenge to direct, because, of course, everything has to be very precise. How are you able to achieve that?

Rehearsal. The only way to do this is to be very prepared going in, pre-stage everything to make sure it works. It’s almost like choreography – the beats are very set, the timing – slam the door here, open the door here, set this thing down here, don’t move on this line. All of that is very, very, very meticulous. So you have to drill it, you have to run it over and over and over again. The actors have had to not only memorize a lot of lines, but also a ton of blocking, the timing with the musical sections. We have a great, very seasoned cast. So it’s just a matter of rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.

The suspense is almost as important as the comedy in Clue. How do you balance between them? 

It’s just an innate sense of comic timing. I just know when it’s going to get a laugh and when it isn’t. I got a lot of that from growing up in New York and going to a lot of theater and seeing how it’s done. But the cast and I have a running gag that what we’re doing is very much like a Warner Brothers cartoon, the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck ones. The comic timing of those geniuses was impeccable. I think I got that from a very early age. 

I was also impressed by the set and all of its moving parts when I saw Clue at the Granada. Being that this is regional theater, what’s happening with the set at the Garvin?

You’ll have to come see for yourself, but I will tell you without spoiling too much. It’s two levels with a grand staircase, rooms on both levels that have various ways of revealing themselves. It’s very fun.

For those who haven’t seen the play or the movie, can you share how the concept of multiple endings is handled?

The playwrights figured out a way to handle the concept of different types of endings, which is great for a whodunit murder mystery. You’re definitely getting clues dropped as you go through the show, with madcap and mayhem and murders. There’s so much going on that eventually even the most discerning audience member is going to lose track of everything, because there are too many clues. But I think that’s the point. You’re supposed to give up at some point and just enjoy the comedy. And then you find out at the end what happened.

SBCC Theater Group’s Clue previews October 7-9, opens October 10 and runs through October 24 at the Garvin Theatre. Visit www.theatregroupsbcc.com

Sold Out Show of the Week: ‘Horse’ Sense 

Here’s a sobering thought: Bringing Down the Horse, the smash hit second album from The Wallflowers, led by Bob Dylan’s kid (!) Jakob Dylan, is 30 years old. A critical and commercial triumph, the T Bone Burnett-produced album spawned four singles – “6th Avenue Heartache,” “One Headlight,” “The Difference,” and “Three Marlenas” – and sold four million copies (yes, it was still the days when Spotify didn’t exist). Singer-songwriter-guitarist Dylan has brought the band to the Lobero several times in the interim, but the October 14 date is a special one, as The Wallflowers will perform the full Horse album in sequence. Then the band will pay tribute to the host of an earlier generation of rock singer-songwriters by reaching back a half century to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to perform their classic 1982 album Long After Dark – not one of Petty’s biggest sellers but it did have “You Got Lucky” – also in sequence. But doesn’t it still feel like just yesterday both those records came out?