Clue: The Musical Turns a Board Game Into an Interactive Whodunit at Theatre 98

Fairhope’s Theatre 98 brought the classic board game to life with Clue: The Musical, its second production of the 2012 season. The show, directed by Randy Hicks, runs April 26-29 and May 2-6 at the Fairhope theater, with 8 p.m. curtain times Thursday through Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday matinees.

The production gives the Eastern Shore’s community theater calendar one of its most unusual entries of the year. Clue: The Musical takes the Parker Brothers whodunit — for decades a staple of family game nights — and turns it into a stage show where the audience does not simply watch the mystery unfold but actually decides it. For a company like Theatre 98, which has long balanced standard community-theater fare with riskier experiments, the show is a natural fit: familiar enough to draw families and board game loyalists, novel enough to give regulars something they have genuinely never seen.

The interactive production puts the audience in the detective’s role. Before the story begins, three audience members select oversized cards naming the murderer, the weapon and the room, and the combination changes with every performance.

That mechanic is what sets the show apart from a standard musical. Because the cards are drawn fresh each night, no two performances resolve the same way — the cast has to be prepared for every possible combination, and the audience attends knowing it is being dealt into the outcome. It is a structure borrowed as much from murder-mystery dinner theater as from Broadway, and it turns the age-old question of the board game — Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the rope, or someone else entirely — into a live vote of sorts, played out scene by scene.

Each suspect then steps forward with a motive in the first round of scenes, with Mr. Boddy offering a clue after each one. Following intermission, a detective questions all of the characters in a second round of scenes, and the audience’s answer is finally put to the test against the sealed envelope.

The two-act structure paces the mystery the way the board game plays out: gather the clues, eliminate the suspects, make the accusation. The sealed envelope is the payoff — the moment when everything the audience thinks it has pieced together is checked against the combination chosen before the curtain rose.

Directing a show with a variable ending is a different job than directing a conventional play. Randy Hicks and the cast have to rehearse not one resolution but every possible one, keeping each suspect’s scenes sharp whether that character turns out to be the killer or an innocent bystander. The reward for that extra preparation is a show that stays fresh for the actors across a two-weekend run — no performance is a rerun, and the cast gets to watch a different group of audience members react in real time to a different solution every night.

Fairhope’s community theater tradition

Theatre 98 has been part of Fairhope’s cultural landscape for decades, operating as a volunteer-driven company whose productions are staged by and for the community. Fairhope’s arts scene runs deep for a town of its size — galleries, writers and performing groups have long clustered around the bluff-top city — and the theater is a fixture of that ecosystem, drawing audiences from across Baldwin County and across the bay from Mobile.

A local cast brings the game to life

John Gautier plays Mr. Boddy, the evening’s destined victim, with Tanis Harcey pulling double duty as the detective and the assistant. The suspects include Lacy Delaino as Mrs. White, Cindy Cazalas as Mrs. Peacock, Colin Doherty as Professor Plum, Maggie Larche as Miss Scarlet, Mickey Megginson as Colonel Mustard and Terry Adams as Mr. Green.

The casting maps directly onto the game board’s familiar roster of suspects, and fans of the original will recognize each character the moment they appear. Playing Mr. Boddy in a show like this is a particular challenge — the victim must die, in a sense, night after night while remaining the evening’s comic center — while the double-cast detective and assistant role keeps one performer moving between the two sides of the mystery. The six suspects each carry their own motive, which means the first act’s confession scenes give every member of the ensemble a featured moment.

That ensemble structure is one reason the show works so well on a community stage. Rather than depending on one or two lead performers to carry the evening, the musical distributes its material evenly across the cast — every suspect gets a scene, a motive and a song, and the audience’s nightly card draw determines whose moment becomes the story’s center. For a volunteer company, that balance spreads the spotlight and makes the show an ensemble showcase in the truest sense.

The production leans heavily into its board-game roots: the set stacks the piano and live percussion on top of towers of board games, the songs and dance numbers land plenty of laughs, and the script winks at other old favorites, including Sorry, Life and Twister.

The set design turns nostalgia itself into scenery. Board game boxes built into towers frame the musicians, and the visual jokes multiply as the evening goes on — a set that reminds the audience of every game closet in every family room on the Eastern Shore. The musical numbers keep the tone light rather than ominous; this is a comedy first, with the mystery as the spine and the songs supplying the laughs that carry it from one confession to the next.

Tickets and reservations are available through the Theatre 98 box office at 251-928-4366. Theatre 98 also announced auditions for its next show, the comedy Regrets Only, on May 7 and May 8 at 7 p.m. at the theater, open to men and women of all ages with no experience required.

Community theaters like Theatre 98 occupy a particular place in towns like Fairhope. The company draws its casts from the surrounding community rather than from professional ranks, which means the people on stage are neighbors, teachers, retirees and students volunteering their evenings — and the audition announcements the theater posts between productions are open invitations rather than cattle calls. The “no experience required” note on the Regrets Only audition notice is standard language for the company, and it reflects the pipeline that keeps a community theater alive: every show needs new faces, and every longtime member started with a first audition.

The May 7-8 audition dates also fall conveniently right after Clue closes, giving audience members inspired by what they have just watched a chance to act on it within days. Community theaters rely on exactly that cycle — a show ends, curiosity peaks, and the next round of volunteers walks in the door. The comedy Regrets Only will give the theater’s next cast a tonal change of pace from a murder musical, and the open-to-all-ages casting call suggests the company expects to fill roles from across its usual range of ages and experience levels.

The 2012 season’s second production also says something about the theater’s programming instincts. Sandwiching an interactive board-game musical between the season’s other shows gives the company a crowd-pleaser with broad family appeal, and the timing — two weekends spanning late April into early May — catches the season when Fairhope’s spring visitors are out in force and locals are looking for evening entertainment that does not require a trip across the bay.

For audiences, the practical draw of Clue: The Musical is repeat value. Because the murderer, weapon and room are re-dealt at every performance, a family that sees the show once can return the following weekend and watch an entirely different outcome — a built-in incentive that ordinary musicals cannot offer. The Sunday 2:30 p.m. matinees give the show a daytime option for younger audience members, while the Thursday through Saturday 8 p.m. curtains serve the traditional date-night crowd.

The show also demonstrates why interactive theater has endured in community settings. The format asks less of the audience than a straight mystery — the clues arrive on stage, on schedule — but it demands more attention than a standard musical, since the audience is expected to actually solve the case. For regular theatergoers the participation is the novelty; for first-timers drawn in by the board game connection, it is a welcoming introduction to live theater, the kind of first experience that turns casual attendees into season ticket holders.

By the time the run closes with the May 6 performance, the company will have staged the same story with every conceivable ending — and each audience will have left with its own version of the evening. That is a fitting outcome for a show built from a game whose own results are never decided until the last card is turned, and it is why Theatre 98’s choice for its second production of 2012 doubles as one of its most engaging: the mystery belongs to everyone in the room, and only the envelope knows for sure.