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Clue - The Musical

Clue - The Musical has music by Galen Blum, Vinnie Martucci, and Wayne Barker, lyrics by Tom Chiodo, with a book by Peter DePietro. It is an Off-Broadway show first produced in 1997. The musical is based on the board game Clue.

Clue - The musical is a murder mystery set in a mansion with multiple suspects and a detective. The highlight of the musical is that the ending is to be decided by the audience.

The script has been written to make it an interactive musical play where the audience can participate by selecting cards with numbers to guess who the killer is, the weapon used, and the room where the murder happened. Though it sounds easy, there are as many as 216 possible endings for the musical. And the best part is that the script has a relevant conclusion with dialogues for each possibility.

More About Clue

The musical wasn’t the first attempt to turn the board game into a visual adaptation. A black comedy film was made in 1985 based on the game and had the same title. British television aired a show called Cluedo from 1990 to 1993, adapted from the same board game.

Peter DePietro and Tom Chiodo worked to create the musical in 1993. The theatrical tryouts were performed in Baltimore in 1995 and Chicago in 1996. It was then produced Off-Broadway in 1997. However, the response and reviews were not favorable.

The musical began to gain fame over the years as the company performed at various community theaters. It is presented in two acts, with eight musical numbers in each. There are nine characters, including the victim, the killer, and the clumsy detective.

The characters are varied (and stereotypical), with a charismatic host (victim) and his wife, a colonel, a con artist masquerading as an entrepreneur, a black widow and socialite, a genius professor, a lounge performer, and a happy chief of domestic at the manor.

Many reviews published in the New York Times and other papers didn’t have good things to say about the musical. After all, using a murder mystery board game as a basis for a musical seems odd, even if the musical is a simplified version.

However, the company has been performing the musical for more than 20 years and has toured 500 cities around the globe. This proves Clue - The Musical has merit and is a brave attempt to do something different and unique.