‘Clue: Live on Stage!’ review: Like the Disney ride version of the movie

"One plus two, plus one, plus one ..."

"Let us in! Let us in!" "Let us out! Let us out!"

"Communism was just a red herring."

If these quotes sound familiar, you're probably one of the many devotees of the cult classic Clue," the 1985 movie improbably based on a board game that went on to delight fans for decades.

You also may have been at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday evening, where fans showed up in full force, some even in costume, for opening night of "Clue: Live on Stage!," anticipating the well-worn lines even before they were delivered, and seeing whether the stage version could capture even some of the film's magic.

Skip to end of carousel The Style sectionStyle is where The Washington Post explains what's happening on the front lines of culture — including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion — with wit, personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories,. To subscribe to the Style Memo newsletter,. End of carousel This production is a relatively recent phenomenon (even if unauthorized, amateur versions of the work have popped up before, if my high school drama department is any indication). Originally produced at the Bucks County Playhouse outside of Philadelphia in 2017 and later developed as "Clue: A New Comedy" at the Cleveland Play House in 2020, the show, written by Sandy Rustin (with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price), is now on an extensive national tour, but it has never appeared on Broadway.

Few adaptations have been made to Jonathan Lynn's quippy film script, beyond some minor adjustments. (Especially given current headlines , it's probably for the best that we aren't connecting monkeys' brains to Cantonese cuisine right now.) We're still at a foreboding mansion in the McCarthy era on a dark and stormy night, with six strangers being offered pseudonyms to use at a dinner party (Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, etc.). There, they'll confront a butler who seems to know way too much about their unsavory pasts, and their host, Mr. Boddy, who ostensibly has been blackmailing them for years. Boddy flips the script by offering each of them a deadly weapon (a lead pipe, a revolver — all familiar to players of the board game) to get rid of that nosy butler; when he turns out the lights, murder and high jinks ensue.

"Clue: Live on Stage!" really digs into the farcical, slapstick elements of the movie with great success, giving "Noises Off"style vibes as the players uncover corpses and dodge crashing chandeliers. Set pieces drop from the ceiling or unfold rapidly from the walls, with Lee Savage's design effectively capturing the mansion's dark corners and secret passages. (Fun allusions to the game abound, including maps that resemble its board and the notepad checklists players use to solve the crime.)

The play, which clips along at a brisk 90 minutes, can sometimes feel like the Disney ride version of the film, drawing out its most iconic moments for familiar laughs. (Yep, we're making out with corpses to the tune of "Life Could Be a Dream" here, too. And Tari Kelly gets extensive, earned applause when she delivers Mrs. White's "flames on the side of my face" monologue.) The story's connections to Washington, where all of the blackmail victims' less-than-American activities are taking place, give "Clue" the chance to make the occasional inside joke with the Kennedy Center audience. (An Old Ebbitt Grill reference, for example.) But the zany romp is less successful in achieving the film's moments of foreboding suspense, or the wicked edge underlying much of its humor.

To re-create the improbable, lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry of the original movie's cast (Tim Curry! Madeline Kahn! Michael McKean!) would be a herculean task, and although "Clue" doesn't quite get there, it's clear that the players are having a good time. As the clumsy Mr. Green, John Shartzer is particularly adept at the role's physical comedy demands, and Christina Anthony quickly becomes an audience favorite with her direct, eyebrows-raised take on Miss Scarlet. John Treacy Egan gets a lot of mileage out of Colonel Mustard's buffoonery, though Mark Price struggles at times to take full comedic command of the proceedings as the butler, Wadsworth.

Why a stage version of "Clue" now, nearly 40 years after the film? There probably isn't some deep explanation beyond introducing a beloved work to new audiences. A young woman walking out behind me Tuesday evening told her companion that she'd enjoyed the play; had she seen the movie? She'd thought about it, but no, not yet. "It looked really, really old," she said with a laugh. Give it a whirl, kid. It might charm you even more.

Clue: Live on Stage!