No one needs a detective to find out that comedy is a physically demanding genre. Indeed, Wren Theatre’s Clue makes the case from its very first entrance. The lights come up to find Lizzie Moffatt’s maid Yvette darting across the stage, dragging a trolley cart with buoyant energy. As she arranges the room for a dinner party, the tone has been set: this will be an evening of over-the-top theatricality, built on the pleasure of watching familiar material executed with strenuous excess.
Part of the excitement in watching Clue lies in recognition. There are, of course, the weapons, rooms, and suspects of the famous board game. There is also, for many, the memory of the 1985 film starring Tim Curry. Drawn directly from Jonathan Lynn’s original screenplay, the stage version preserves most of its jokes and familiar lines. The plot unfolds in real time at a dinner party in a New England mansion. The owner, Mr Boddy (Liam Cardinell), has invited six guests, all of whom he has been blackmailing. Soon, murder turns the high-tension dinner into a whodunit, with each new twist dragging the story deeper into hilarious absurdity.
Annex Theatre makes an ideal playground for such a farce. Its distinctive architecture – with two long wooden staircases, upper corridors, and multiple doors – turns naturally into a house built for chase. Kieran Byrne’s design deepens this 1954-built setting with the addition of domestic relics such as armchairs, a chaise longue, and a grandfather clock. Yet director Tatum Lee also lets the illusion wobble, planting curious anachronistic paintings of skulls and pink flowers – playful signals of the production’s broader camp sensibility.
Lee understands that the mystery is merely the pretext for a dark comedy of exaggeration. Much of the production’s humour is, therefore, written in body language. Each entrance becomes a miniature portrait, with posture and gesture sketching a gallery of comic archetypes: from the neurotic Mrs White (Jesse McQueen) to the prim Mrs Peacock (Bonnie Anderson), and from the highbrow Professor Plum (Jack Creaghan) to the clumsy Mr Green (Daniel Christian Jones). It feels like we are going through the game’s deck of suspect cards.
Around the narrow dinner table, the characters squeeze together, creating a droll awkwardness. In other ensemble moments, the cast seems to move as one startled herd, wide-eyed and skittish: like deer caught in the headlights. And when a chandelier falls, flickering light catches the event in fractured frames, turning a gag into something almost cinematic.
Michael Holland’s musical stings sharpen the theatrical effect: jazzy, sneaky tunes mimic irregular footsteps creeping down a corridor. The room itself becomes a dance floor, as Mrs White tangos with the butler, and Colonel Mustard (Robert Notman) slips into a whimsical pas-de-bourrée with the flirtatious Miss Scarlett (Jennifer McEwen).
In Clue, rhythm turns out to be the real weapon. Punchlines, screams, and frantic entrances push the wit into deliberate overstatement, and the mayhem becomes clearest in the final stretch. When the butler Wadsworth delivers his concluding monologue, retracing all the events of the night, Jordan Imray gives a rapid-fire enunciation that becomes a true feat of comic stamina. Meanwhile, around him, the ensemble keeps moving relentlessly, jogging from one room to another, exiting and reappearing in a ridiculous procession. With a knowingly flimsy plot, the tension has to come from the absurd rhythm of comic timing. And when the ensemble locks into that pulse, as it does here, the production’s energy catches fire, and the evening finds its flow. At certain other moments, I felt the cast straining against the rat-a-tat pace of the writing.
So the game here is not only finding out whodunnit – the show’s multiple endings have that covered – but seeing who can keep up with the manic pace. Like the board game that inspired it, Clue’s ultimate amusement lies in how nimbly it moves from room to room.
Clue runs at Annex Theatre until June 14, 2026. Tickets and more information are available here.
© Alessandro Stracuzzi, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
