Upon taking my seat for Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter, their second Cluedo play, I overheard fevered audience speculation as to who our murderer would be, their weapon of choice, and the location. Such is the excitement that Cluedo, the board game celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2024, inspires.
A larger-than-life recreation of the game set in the swinging 1960s, Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter sees the failing rock star Rick Black assemble friends and associates to hear him play his nine-minute title track from his new album, hoping to relaunch his career. Of course, add in a storm, some unexpected arrivals, and a host of secrets, and this is a recipe for Black’s murder.
Brimming with energy, Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter comes alive with its farcical physical comedy and entertaining set pieces. Anchored by a great set created by David Farley to evoke the board game’s design, it features the typical game board with illuminated sections according to which room is on stage, anchoring the play in the game’s tradition. While the plot is original, the character names, weapons, and rooms are faithful to the original.
The best visual moments, however, come courtesy of movement director Anna Healey, helping to create whole rooms and vignettes from actors creeping and colliding across the stage. This exaggerated farce, making great use of the ensemble, positions the play in the same waters as director Mark Bell’s previous work on The Play That Goes Wrong, too. Doors, windows, and furniture fly and glide in and out, and the actors effortlessly create a dynamic repertoire of transitions and set-ups, with Ellie Leach’s recent Strictly Come Dancing experience coming in handy here. Highlights include the upside-down playing of billiards and the creation of hallways through the holding up of ancestral paintings.
Using Cluedo as the recipe for a farce supplies it with seemingly limitless reserves of energy. Sometimes this muddled some of the trickier humour and specialised gags, with more specific references to the Vietnam War and Al Green mixing alongside some amusing musical one-liners. Bennett and Anderson caught the most laughs as the actor-turned-Butler and the long-suffering housekeeper respectively, supplying exasperation and worn disapproval.
Sometimes these performances deal with material that doesn’t always land. Many gags ensue from the language differences between Brits and Americans, but these are often recycled over the runtime and wear thin. Some static staging contrasts the more noticeably energetic scene transitions, but each scene whips by to the point where if one joke isn’t to your taste there is another around the corner to make up for it.
The play comes into its own by Act Two, in which momentum is regained to propel it into some very funny moments (and indeed this was the half when my audience – topped up on ice cream and one of Mrs Peacock’s craved-for drinks – came alive to the production). It embraces its Saturday morning cartoon tone and with it physical comedy, knives in backs, exaggerated shock, and even some further Weekend at Bernie’s ventriloquism. These gags may mask some repetitive jokes, particularly centred around idioms and butlering, but the pace keeps Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter on the road, to the point where its final twist(s) were genuinely surprising and funny, delivered by a cast who are clearly enjoying themselves.
If not completely side-splitting and suffering a little from the first half working to putting the pieces in play, by the second half it finds its stride and delivers a murderous night of bodies piling high.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter is playing at the Sheffield Lyceum until May 18th, & touring the U.K. until November 30th
