The first production of the 2021 calendar year at the Lyric Theatre will be “Clue: The Play,” slated for Feb. 19-28.
The Lyric’s official website describes the play as follows:
“It’s a dark and stormy night, and you’ve been invited to a very unusual dinner party. Each of the guests has an alias, the butler offers a variety of weapons, and the host is, well . . . dead. So whodunnit? Join the iconic oddballs known as Scarlet, Plum, White, Green, Peacock, and Mustard as they race to find the murderer in Boddy Manor before the body count stacks up. Based on the cult classic film and the popular board game, Clue is a madcap comedy that will keep you guessing until the final twist.”
Larry Mathis is serving as the director, his final play in Brownwood before he and his wife Terri move to Georgetown.
“We’re having a blast, and we’re having a really good time with rehearsals,” Mathis said in an interview earlier this week on KOXE radio. “The set is about 99.8 percent complete now. Think of a Clue board, and all the different rooms they go into and the board itself. It’s a going to be a fun show with a great line up of actors as well.”
Mathis considers Clue one of the most challenging plays he’s directed from a technical standpoint.
“This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Mathis said. “Think about a game board and a lounge, a study, a kitchen, a parlor, a dining room, a library, you’ve got all these different places you need to be, and you have to get all that on to a very tiny stage and get all these characters moving around like pawn pieces, so it’s been a real challenge. They are amazing, they adapt, they change, they figure things out.”
The 12-member cast includes Valarie Nelson, who plays Mrs. White.
“If you’ve seen the movie, it came out in the mid 80s, so that was one of my favorite movies because I loved to play Clue the board game,” Nelson said in the same KOXE interview with Mathis. “I’m just tickled pink that I get to be part of this.
“It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s going to be very funny. We’ve got some new talent in the cast that’s amazing. People who have been here for a while are in it, too. It’s really good, strong cast.”
Mathis has directed more than a dozen plays for the Lyric and credits those behind the scenes for much of the success.
“We would be nothing without them,” Mathis said. “Jimmy Henry and Randy Harkey, we’ve been working together for so long, they now understand me and they can read my mind. When we started this thing, all I had on the stage for them was some blue painter’s tape for where everything was supposed to go. I explained to them this whole set with nothing but blue painter’s tape down and they got it. As we went along I’d draw sketches and they know me well enough by now as to what I want, and these guys have done an incredible job.
“And I’ve worked with Kris Henry I don’t know how many times now as my stage manager and she is the general. She keeps things in order back stage, which I’m not very good at, and there’s a bazillion props.”
Nelson added, “The props in this show are intense. I don’t envy Kris’ role in that but she has done amazingly on getting all those props like she normally does.”
Clue’s eight-show run features the following schedule:
- 2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19
- 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20
- 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21
- 2:30, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26
- 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27
- 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28
Tickets, at $15 for adults and $10 for students, are available for purchase at www.brownwoodlyrictheatre.com. Social distancing measures are still taking place at the Lyric, which includes a limited amount of seating.