Audience has role in LFT community production
Lighthouse presents CLUE The Musical
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Well known board game characters will come to life and take to the stage in Port Dover in April.
CLUE The Musical is a venture into new territory for Lighthouse Festival Theatre artistic director Derek Ritschel, who is directing this community theatre presentation.
“I’ve been in theatre 30 years, doing musicals, mysteries, dramas, and comedies,” said the director. “But I’ve never done a choose-your-own adventure.”
CLUE The Musical has been staged all over the world and is a play-through of the classic Parker Bros. board game CLUE.
“When the audience enters, they have a piece of paper and pencil, and as the play goes along, they take the clues and figure out who did what, with what weapon, in what room,” Ritschel explains. “At the end everyone who got it right stands up.”
At the outset one person from the audience draws three cards that are placed into an envelope, and only the actor portraying Mr. Body (the dead body) knows the answer.
“He’s narrating the show and giving clues,” the director noted. “He is the one manipulating all the actors to figure out what the ending is. And there’s 216 (possible) endings.”
Ritschel said the community theatre group at Lighthouse usually does musicals such as Mary Poppins or the Wizard of Oz that feature a large cast of about 25 actors.
Uncertain of the COVID situation when planning a musical some time ago, the director opted for one with a smaller cast. CLUE has eight actors.
“It’s a pretty intense musical with some of the hardest music I’ve ever seen,” he observed. “Out of all the musicals we’ve done in the community with local actors, this is by far the hardest score we’ve ever worked on.”
Ritschel admitted he has never done a production with audience participation.
“There’s a lot of moving parts but the local actors here are very good,” he said. “They are grasping the concept pretty quickly.’
Port Dover actor Julia MacLeod has taken on the role of Mrs. Peacock.
“I have a solo in the show I’m excited about,” she said, noting that most of the songs are sung as an ensemble. “We’re all singing all the numbers and will be on the stage most of the time, so it’s very collaborative.”
Involved with community theatre for the past five years, MacLeod previously played the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz musical at Lighthouse.
“Musicals we’ve been in before, there’s the songs, there’s the script, so this is a different way of going about it,” she said of CLUE. “It could be a different show every night, different ending, and different lines we have to say.”
She predicts the audience will have lots to look at with the entire cast on stage throughout the show.
“I love to perform. It’s a drug that’s pretty hard to resist,” MacLeod shared. “I like the people involved, the venue is beautiful, and the community gets behind every show.
“That’s a pretty good recipe for wanting to be involved. It’s a good place to be.”
CLUE The Musical will be performed from April 6 to 21 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, plus a Sunday matinee.
For ticket information visit lighthousetheatre.com
bethompson@postmedia.com
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