Cluedo 2 at the Royal and Derngate all this week until Saturday 3oth November 2024

With Christmas fast approaching, one boardgame that will sure to make an appearance over the festivities in my house, will be our well worn and somewhat battered box of Cluedo. My family have always enjoyed trying to work out who committed the murder, in which room it took place and which of the weapons was used to commit the deadly deed!

It was with this in mind that I ventured along to the Royal and Derngate in Northampton to watch a hit new whodunit show based on the classic boardgame, originally devised by Birmingham born Anthony E. Pratt during the Second World War.

Starring West End and TV star Jason Durr, who many readers may remember as policeman Mike Bradley in the long running successful television series, Heartbeat, set in Aidensfield, Yorkshire. Jason appears as Colonel Eugene Mustard, manager and agent to fading rock star Rick Black (Liam Horrigan), looking in every way like a mix between The Cure songsmith Robert Smith during the early nineties and Guns & Roses, guitar behemoth, Slash!

Award winning actress and 2023 Strictly Come Dancing champion, Ellie Leach, on her stage debut playing Miss Annabel Scarlett, a trusted interior designer, will probably be more familiar to many for her 13 year stint on Coronation Street as Faye Windass. Set in the swinging 1960s, with many references to either song titles or familiar pop hits, Rick has not had much chart success for many years and is becoming anxious to reveal his long-awaited comeback album, so he invites a disparate group of people to his brand new mansion, Graveney Manor, in a desperate attempt to revive his fading career.

In a sometimes chaotic and slapstick series of events, taking place around a starkly minimalist set, many of the characters are either murdered or suspected of murder as the plots unravel. Rick`s supermodel wife, The Honourable Emerald Peacock ( Hannah Boyce), Colonel Eugene Mustard, long-time roadie “Professor” Alex Plum (Edward Howells), Miss Scarlett and housekeeper Mrs White, (Dawn Buckland) who is a fixture of the house and appears to know all of its secrets plus Rick’s former song-writing partner “The Reverend” Hal Green (Gabriel Paul) back from military service in Vietnam, or is he? This is Hal Green, not the hugely successful songwriter and musician Al Green! And just to throw a wrench into the proceedings, sorry spanner, who is that Butler Wadsworth (Jack Bennett)? Is he a Butler or an actor? As the bodies pile up ready to be thrown into a swimming pool hidden somewhere under a snooker table in the billiard room, everyone is a potential suspect or victim!

Written by BAFTA Award-winners Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (Birds of A Feather, Dreamboats and Petticoats), and directed by Mark Bell – director of the original hit UK production of Cluedo and the global phenomenon, The Play That Goes Wrong, Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter  jumps from the kitchen to the dining room, from the library to the billiard room through to the study with this reviewer becoming totally perplexed and confused as to who did what, where and when!

If you are looking for an evening of light entertainment with lots of silly jokes and crazy ideas, you should enjoy this succession of comic capers and hilarity. So whodunnit?

Cluedo 2 at the Royal and Derngate all this week until Saturday 3oth November 2024