Based on the classic board game, “Clue the Musical” sings and dances around the solving of a murder at a mansion. The audience joins in by selecting from cast members the cards that determine the murderer, the weapon used and the room it went down in, thus creating a different show each time out.
4 comments:
I wish the article had included more detail about the ways in which both the performers and production team prepared for this production in rehearsal, and how it works out for them onstage. I suppose since it’s a review and not a case study, it makes sense, but still… It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to make it to any of the performance dates, but I’d really love to because I’m so curious about the actual logistics of the unknown ending. I wonder if they rehearsed all possible endings, or just worked on some of them and then focused more heavily on their characters rather than plot, relying more on improve than preparation. I imagine this would be quite difficult from a stage manager’s perspective; when do you call cues? It would probably be a lot of fun, actually, to be able to figure out how to call the show every night based on what happens onstage. There might be milestones that the actors hit every night in a given basic framework, regardless of the actual characters involved, which would allow the stage manager and run crew to call cues and run the show as the director wants them to.
So I agree with the above comment. They were very vague in describing the way the surprise ending worked. The way they seemed to be describing it, was that the actors, at least, don't know who did it until the reveal. This, in my opinion, could be amended to add to the humor and success of the show.
I once saw a production that was based on a video game, where the character that dies at the end was decided upon by an audience vote before the show, so no one knew who died except the actors and technicians. This allowed the actors to drop clues during the show about who was going to die, and gave the audience the opportunity to guess who they chose to die.
That was very successful when I saw it and I hope that "Clue the Musical" does something similar.
I wonder if Clue the Musical has taken anything from the 1985 movie Clue. The talk about the changing surprise ending reminds me more of the movie, as that one had three different endings, all of which were, for the most part, plausible, though some made more sense than others. I wonder if the surprise is something like that, where the murderer changes based on the audience, or if there will be some sort of continuing twist as the play continues after the confession.
"Clue the Musical" is a really cool idea - who else would have thought to base an entire live show off of a board game? The concept of having a different ending every time is really intriguing, but it also sounds really risky -- it just seems like there are ever so many ways in which it could go wrong. I know that I personally could never come up with anything like that on the spot, and I have so much respect for the actors who do it everyday and relish in it. I wonder if the unknown ending ever causes plot holes in the beginning and middle of the performance, or if the plot is more built onto itself. Nevertheless, "Clue" sounds like it would be a really enjoyable, if rather hectic, experience.
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