Remember the old joke about the guy who complained of the poor quality of a restaurant’s food, then added “and the portions are so small.”
So it is with Clue, the painfully silly, amateurishly performed show at the Kravis Center through Saturday. And it only runs an intermissionless 80 minutes.
Maybe the West Palm Beach performing arts center was stuck for a show to fill its Kravis on Broadway series. Otherwise I haven’t a clue why it would book this laugh-challenged comedy, based on the classic board game and less-than-classic 1985 movie of the same name. Expect the subscriber complaint line to be ringing off the hook this week.
Adapted by Sandy Rustin from Jonathan Lynn’s screenplay, Clue has been on tour in one form or another since 2017, and wisely has never come close to arriving on Broadway. It is set in New England’s Boddy Manor, “a mansion of epic proportions and terrifying secrets,” as the program informs us, presumably referring to the all-too-obvious secret of how lame this show is.
One by one, we are introduced to six victims and suspects-to-be — Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet — unknown to each other, but with one thing in common: They are each being blackmailed for past indiscretions ranging from marital infidelity to murder. Greeting them is the mansion’s butler, Wadsworth, officious, efficient and not to be trusted. He will soon pass out gifts to the group — a candlestick, dagger, lead pipe, revolver, rope and wrench — which players of the game of Clue will recognize as the potential homicide weapons.
The show’s comic tone clues us in that this is nothing to take seriously, despite the fact that characters get knocked off with alarming regularity. Rustin’s jokes are fairly groan-worthy, and more distressing is the fact that there is really no mystery for the audience to try and solve.
Director Casey Hushion has apparently told his cast, “If you can’t be funny, be loud,” which most of his performers manage to do. As Wadsworth, Jeff Skowron is a standout, particularly as he recaps the entire show late in the proceedings. Also an asset is John Shartzer as Mr. Green, who excels at physical comedy, notably when endangered by a descending chandelier.
The scenic design for Boddy Manor by Lee Savage is also a plus, worthy of a better show. He takes us throughout the mansion and when the script calls for the action to occur in another room, it simply slides into view from the wings.
Otherwise, there is little to recommend about this stage version of Clue. If the very title gives you a pleasurable feeling of nostalgia, dig out your long-neglected board game from the closet shelf and stay home and play it.
CLUE, Kravis Center Dreyfoos Hall, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Saturday, April 19. $51-$101. 561-832-7469 or visit kravis.org.