Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back, listeners, to our latest episode of the Cosmic Curtain. Today we're discussing the stage play Clue Live, which is currently on its North American tour.
But before we dive into the all the murder mystery fun, don't forget to like, follow and subscribe to Cosmic Circus, Broadway or us, the boxy babes on all social media platforms. Oxybabes. Rj, we're here. Second show of the night and straight on to morning. How you doing?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Still chugging the caffeine, which I will regret in like an hour, but it's fine.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: When we're done with this, you're not going to be able to sleep that. But that's okay.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Correct. And then I'll just watch 7,000 episodes of some version of NCIS and my dog will just cry at me and wonder why we're still awake.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: So, I mean, what a way to wrap up the night. Solving murders mysteries after we've just seen Clue. That seems like. That seems apropos.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: So before we get started into all of the fun, spoiler warning for anybody who has not seen Clue live and or has not experienced the board game in their entire life or hasn't seen the 1985 film starring Tim Curry, going to be talking about different aspects of this, including what happened in the show that's currently on Broadway in Detroit. So scroll along or pause the video and then get back to us. Okay, that being said, rj, I'm going to start off with a hard hitting question. Did you grow up playing Clue?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: No.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: No.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: You've, you've didn't. You've not played Clue?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Oh man. I didn't play.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: So we're just going to, we're going to jump that chip right away. I went in blind.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Why did you never play Clue?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: We didn't have it.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Okay, that's fine.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Also, we were like, there was like really? Well, and this is just my memory not serving me well.
The primary, the game of choice was Rummy Cube.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Okay. I vaguely know that game because it.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Was my grandma's favorite game. And so that what we played, that was it. I mean we did, we did play other games. We played like childhood games. But like Clue is an aged game.
Like it's not new. You know what I mean? So when it comes to like aged games running Cube, like we have the original box with the old, old everything that's stained yellow.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Next place.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: And I think maybe he, like we played Monopoly aside from that. But Clue wasn't. It wasn't, it wasn't the thing I.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Was going to say you struck me as a Monopoly family. I do not know why if that's how I pictured it. And it's funny because Monopoly pisses me off. I cannot make it through the game without getting angry.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Why? That's a whole other thing to go through. We will have a separate episode for Monopoly because. Yes. Did I get my family Costco version of Monopoly for Christmas last year? Yes, I did. Have we played it? Yes, we do.
And a collection of monopolies. We have Michigan, Great Lakes, Monopoly.
There's another Monopoly. The obviously regular Monopoly. We have like national parks, Monopoly. There's a few.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: How many of them are up at the cabin?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Two only.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: That's not bad. That's not bad.
I was a Clue kid growing up. See that, that doesn't shock you? No way.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: It's a, it's strategy kind of.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: It is. And in fact I actually got being the Harry Potter kid that I was. I have a. Before like right when the books came out, they had a whole bunch of like pre movie Harry Potter games and stuff like that. And I have the Murder at Hogwarts game and it's actually in my office at work and I play it with the kids quite frequently.
If we're talking old school though, Professor Plum was my guy. I loved the original game. We had the one that was like the box falling apart, but I had the, the actual pieces of the, of the murder weap it. We were, we were a Clue family and I think it was because Monopoly took too long and just made too too much infighting that we just Clue you. Everybody had to solve the murder and you were kind of a free for all. So definitely was, was a Clue kid growing up and I've seen the film. So I think this is going to be interesting because you don't have, you have a perspective, a clean perspective of the, of the show and I have one that's been tainted by years of Clue experience.
Did you have any preconceived notions about the play before going into it?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: 0.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: 0.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: I knew that it just based on just the, the marketing. I knew that it had to be a comedy. I knew that it had to be like a slapstick comedy because otherwise there's no reason that it would work.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Okay, what makes you say that?
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Not that I completely lived under a rock. Like I've heard of Clue. Like I knew it was a game, I knew it was a movie. I knew that it had a following because people like you haven't had stat like oh, I've seen it, I've played it. I'VE I love it. I would love to see it live. Like, it has. It has obviously a following, but I just somehow it totally skipped my radar, which is fair.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: I mean, so I think that the interesting thing about the game is that the game feels very serious, but the movie is not. And so the fact that this is a stage adaptation of the film leans itself well to the show, if that makes sense. Because you're right, it is very funny. It's. It is considered a farce. Like it. And we all know about farces in this world. Like, I mean, this is probably one of the better farces that I've seen, but it's still a farce nonetheless.
Would you agree with that? Do not agree with that.
How would you classify this?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yes. Of ours.
I'm not a farce guy.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: I know.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: And so it's hard because I am. I'm the person in the audience during a farce to roll their eyes. Right. Because I'm like, they're all the same. Which. That's not fair. They're not all the same, but they kind of are. That's the point of them.
So that I haven't seen the movie. Right. Like, I. It's not. It's not something that's gonna cross my. My screen.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: So. So I'm gonna dive in real quick to what is a farce, Because I know the word. I kind of had an idea. But the farce idea is kind of like the running in and out of scenes, slamming doors. Physical comedy. Correct. Which this does have a lot of. There's a lot of physical comedy, and some of it really worked, and some of it maybe didn't work quite so much.
But let's just dive in right into the story. So obviously, this is. Takes place at Body Manor, or over the years, it's Body Mansion. There's a few different words for it, but it's a mansion out in the middle of nowhere. And these six people, all with fake names, are asked to come there. And they're all called there for a reason.
What did you think of the introduction of these characters? Did any of them stand out to you?
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to backtrack for a minute because I looked up farce.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: And it's actually kind of funny, technically. Oxford Dictionary version of farce is a comic, dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrousy and improbable situations. So just had to share. That makes total sense.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: And obviously, I mean, similar to the slapsticks comedy broad Comedy, vaudeville.
But those are our definitions, so. Sorry, Back.
Back on track now.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Vaudeville is actually a farce. I did not ever connect those.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, because, yeah, it is playing on like maybe a little bit more on stereotypes, like exaggerating stereotypes, which of course, like.
Yeah, we, we saw a lot of that last night too, so.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: For sure.
Okay, so inner introductions of characters. Was there any of the characters or the, any of the players that came in that struck you? I feel like everybody has their character.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: I mean, they're, they're all very distant. I mean, you know who everybody is. Right. Like, that is. The point is that they're over exaggerated and playing up whoever they are to the most extreme version of themselves.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: I thought they all did that relatively well. The only one, the one that felt the lightest to me was Mrs. White.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Really?
Why?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: But I think that that's part of the character. Like she is kind of.
There's nothing super outgoing about her until she talks, but like physically she's a little bit quieter, I think, comparatively to the others who have kind of more dramatic entrances.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Sure. I mean, so just kind of breaking down these characters real quick. I, I think obviously most people know these, but so, you know, you start off with the characters like Mrs. Scarlett, who is the sexy, sultry temptress with a secret, you know, and she's very much the.
I can't think of another, another synonym for that. You know, she's just kind of like the very commanding personality of the, of the women who are there, because there's three women and there's three men.
There is Mrs. White, who is a little bit more reserved and quiet and more like the older wife who has the black widow literally secrets behind, behind the, the scenes. Mrs. Peacock, who is the church loving churchgoer, loves God and drinks too heavily even though she wants to pretend like she doesn't.
We have Professor Plum, who is just a creep easy enough. Colonel Mustard, who is lovably stupid for being a colonel. And then of course we have Mr. Green, who is just the basket case of them all. I mean, these are very, they're so such caricatures of the, the of, of the person they're supposed to be, if that makes sense. Like they're exaggerated again in that far style. An exaggeration of all of them. Of like all these personality types.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, and, and aged. Like, I mean, when was this originally put out?
Obviously decades ago.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: And. And that is the characterizations are to the time like they have not changed, I think at all.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: You know, the thing about this is that it's. The film came out in 1985. The show is from the 2000 2017. But this is also set in the 1950s. And I think that they're. I mean, they're greatly poking fun at the characters you would see in a 1950s film of this type. Is really what's going on here.
I mean, you. You have like Wadsworth, who is just like the quintessential British butler who is making passes at the maid, you know, and like, there's. There's. So there's all of these. You're kind of like poking fun at these old tropes for characters as they all come together and they're all kind of learning that there's maybe some secrets underneath the surface with that. There's. They kind of get introduced to Mr. Body.
And so I kind of want to know your opinion. Mr. Body, because he was the. Like, down to the accent, down to the personality, he was also a trope. What. What did you feel when he kind of got introduced into the scene?
[00:13:34] Speaker B: I mean, again, like the eye roll moment of like, okay, we're gonna take every, you know, gangster style.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Mafia looking stereotype and shove it into a bag.
And that is the character.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Sure.
And then the lights go out and he's dead.
Did you from that moment start trying to put the piece together and who did it? Or were you able to kind of separate yourself from the clue pieces? Like putting the pieces together to solve the murder?
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. No, no.
At first I think I thought about it, obviously, because, like, that's the premise. Right. But I also knew, like, I. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I'd either heard of this show or. Or something to. To the. To. Or maybe seen something similarly enough that I was like, I know how this ends.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: And so I didn't even try. Like, I was like, I didn't know specifics, but I knew generally. And so I was like, I'm not gonna try.
Basically. Sure, I'm not gonna try because I'm also trying to like, watch a show.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: And so I think in that way I saw more of the farce side of it than I did as a. Like, I almost didn't see a mystery.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Okay. Which makes total sense for the story because in and of itself, there's really not a way to solve this murder.
You know, I think that that is what's interesting about it is because, like, again, I was trying to put the puzzle pieces together because naturally, that's what I love about television. It's what I love about films. I love trying to solve it before anybody else can because I have to be the one that wins.
But with this one, there is no winning because of how it kind of resolves, which we'll talk about in a second. Like, there's. There's no real clear definition of how it goes. It depends on who, who you're listening to. And so there's not anything specific in the story. Like you're not supposed to solve it because there's nothing to solve.
At least that's how it kind of feels.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, and even that is, I'd be interested in kind of looking through their thought process about the writing. Sure. For it. For that purpose. And obviously it's like hard to do with something like this that has been a film and a game. Like it's. It's unique in that way, which I think is what does draw people to it. And I did see. I mean, I saw a couple people dressed up like the characters.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: And in the little bit of research that I did do, like knowing that it has this, this cult like following, it did very much remind me of when we went and saw.
Oh, why am I blanking?
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Because it's 10 o'clock at night around Halloween.
Don't ask me. Was it Broadway in Detroit?
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
Time warp.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: No. Oh, Rocky Horror Picture Show.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yes.
And the connection there is the cult Lake following Full circle. Okay. Yes.
But yes. And it felt like that kind of showing too. Like the people that were coming out to see it may not typically come to a Broadway show.
Like, it almost didn't feel like we were attending a Broadway show. It felt like we were attending a game.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Or a game show.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: I would agree with that because it wasn't like a traditional esque audience. And I think that's why it leans itself well, that it was a bonus show and it wasn't maybe one for the whole, like for the normal season. Because this is one that had like. It had specific people who had either like grown up with the film, grown up at the game, had some kind of tie to it. They were coming there to like live and experience, which is what Rocky Horde also does. It's about that experience of being there, being around it and experiencing the something that you had loved and it. Which was very nostalgic.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Well, and I know shout out to our friends at Broadway in Detroit for putting together seemingly what I understood as a kind of game clue, like game prior to the performance as a part of the experience.
Just those, those little things from My, for my opinion, are what makes or make, can make or break a theatrical experience when the show is not maybe like the biggest blockbuster.
You're not going for it to be a blockbuster. You're going because you're enjoying the full experience. So how cool for someone who. This is totally their thing, right? They're dressing up night out, they're going to go grab a drink at the bar, they're going to grab the game card or whatever it was. I personally did not do it, so I can't speak to it, but, like, super fun. Just, like, very, very engaging. And the people who were going to like it, really liked it.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: I was going to say that I found myself excited and I wanted to try to get there early if I could, to do that, because if, again, it felt like part of the experience of being like, oh, I get to solve my own murder. I get to do, like, again, there was this whole air and environment that was wrapped into the show that did bring a different energy to it, I think, than saying, going to see, like, a Moulin Rouge. Like, there was.
We don't. This sounds weird, but we don't get a lot of just like, straight. We only get a lot of straight shows, period. But we don't get a lot of comedies like this rolling through here as well. And that's why I think, like, again, that nostalgic factor of you are connecting, in a way, from your past. You know, people that were going to see this that I knew were talking about, like, I grew up on the film. I. When I interviewed Jeff Skyrin and Stephen Graham. Graham Stevens. Sorry.
I asked them about the endings because I knew about the endings of the film because I had seen the DVD and Graham had mentioned going to the theater and having to see it multiple times so you could see the different endings. Like, there was. There's like such a. Like a. Like a. Like a environment in a world around this that was drawing those people in. And I think that that made. I think that if you had that connection, it almost made it a better show.
Like, that deep love for it.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, It. It's more engaging. It's more immersive.
You're not just sitting and taking it in. You're. You're a part of it.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Absolutely. And so, like, speaking of the endings, though, I did like that throughout the show, you know, more murders are piling up. You're trying to figure out who it is. You don't really know who it is. And then you actually did get all the multiple endings for the show, for the Film wrapped up into one, which I thought was really cool, how they did like a rewind thing for Hamilton a little bit, you know, and there was some of those aspects and you got to see how it played out in multiple ways. You got to see different characters be the villain. You got to see different characters be the hero.
And so I do think that, like, story wise, that was kind of a cool. That was kind of. To me, it was kind of the coolest aspect of the show. Besides, a lot of that humor was seeing the different endings play out. And that felt like the Clue game as well, you know. How did you like that?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it was very well done.
A little bit predictable because that's just like where the show was headed. Right. Like, we all knew the direction in which it was going.
But shout out for that monologue because I, for Wadsworth, I was like, dang, that is. That's intense. That's a lot. And also it was well done.
So.
But yeah, I appreciated that as someone who like, kind of had no idea what was going on.
Obviously after, like the second time, I kind of understood what was going on. Yes.
But I'm sure, you know, folks who have spent time with it appreciated the fact that they could kind of see every which way and not just one singular ending.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Right. It gave everybody a chance to kind of see their favorite character be the villain or be the hero. And I think the characterization is very interesting in this show too, because I say if you remember, but you don't, because you didn't play Clue, but like, all the pieces were just little tiny color. Like, here's a red piece, here's a purple piece, you know, and to see them personified and have personalities and see them kind of acting out again, more closely related to the, the movie, but it does give it this interesting relationship of just like seeing that something from your childhood come alive.
And so to me, that was very interesting because again, there was that deep, deep love for that. But speaking of nostalgia too, I want to just say I think it was interesting and we'll. We could talk about this more in episode two as well, with the humor and the acting. But it was also for a straight show, like a stage adaptation of a movie, it didn't change much. Like they. I think that this was one of those shows that they knew people are coming here for an exact experience.
They gave that exact experience to people.
Kind of like Rocky Horror again.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I mean, the, the branding. When you have a cult following, it's all about the branding. Like, it is. It is all about giving the people exactly what they expect to get. And so, you know, obviously, there's nuance to that, but making sure that from everyone's perspective, they're. They're getting what they came for. That can be hard to achieve sometimes. But it seems that people.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: People got it from the audience. Because, again, I know farces aren't your thing. You weren't really. You weren't very interested in this. But I'm thinking of even the people, the people we brought, they got it. Obviously, they had some kind of relationship with this thing, but it felt like audiences really didn't enjoy getting exactly what they wanted. Would you agree with that?
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I thought it was. It was very well received, and it was like, people did laugh out loud. Like, it wasn't. There was. Didn't seem to be any hesitation to enjoy what was happening. Which sometimes with these types of shows, you can get a quieter audience, and then it feels like a different experience because everyone's just holding everything in.
But this didn't feel that way, I think, because the personification was done so well. People felt comfortable laughing out loud and laughing, even if they were the only one laughing at their particular person. Right. Like, we all have that. You know, you have your favorite character, and that's the person that you're really rooting for or really laughing at or whatever. And that was. It was clearly happening.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. And so we have covered the story, we have covered the characters, so that means we are done with part one of our clue discussion.
But stay tuned as we return for part two, where we discuss more of the farcical hilarity from this murder mystery stage show. Thanks again for joining us in our backseats. I'm Brian, and this is my partner. Here is RJ and we are waiting till our next current call. Take care.
