Classic whodunit comes to Meadow Brook stage
Familiar characters from the board game “Clue” — Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, et. al. — attempt to solve a murder mystery when the dinner party host winds up dead in a classic whodunit running through Nov. 7 at Meadow Brook Theatre in Rochester Hills.
“Instead of being something very Sherlock Holmesesque, it’s a slow reveal,” says Gregory James of Lakewood, Ohio, who plays Wadsworth, the butler. “It’s silly and madcap. You suspend disbelief.”
Based on the Hasbro board game and campy 1985 film starring Tim Curry as Wadsworth the butler, “Clue: On Stage” was written by Sandy Rustin. It’s adapted from the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, and original music by Michael Holland.
Six strangers are invited to Boddy Manor under mysterious circumstances.
“They have stakes that would force them to come,” says James, a newcomer to Meadow Brook Theatre. “They’re all being watched by someone.
It takes place in the 1950s. The players are Jennifer Byrne of New York City (Miss Scarlet), Phil Powers of Ann Arbor (Colonel Mustard), Lynnae Lehfeldt of Ann Arbor (Mrs. Peacock), Timothy C. Goodwin of New York City (Professor Plum), Amy Griffin of Nyack, N.Y. (Mrs. White) and Chris Stinson of Washington, D.C. (Mr. Green).
They all have a connection to each other in certain ways. They all have ties to Washington, D.C. or politics. And they all have something to hide.
James, a founding resident member of the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, Calif., says the play is an allegory about the Red Scare and McCarthyism, Sen. Joseph McCarthy carried out a campaign against alleged communists in the U.S. government and other institutions from 1950-54. Many of those people were blacklisted and/or lost their jobs, although most did not belong to the Communist Party.
“I was part of the world premiere in Cleveland,” says James, who has worked extensively with the Actors Co-Op Theatre in Hollywood. “We had audiences who had never seen the movie but enjoyed it.