Being a “theatre kid” is a chronic condition. My whole life, I live with the knowledge that I am one exposure away from going into box-steps and jazz hands, while chanting “a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot,” and other vocal warm up nonsense. Even now, I’m not cured so much as in remission. I’ll never quite shake the naive belief that yes, you can change everything by putting on a show. Yes, I know all the words to “Poison in my Pocket” from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Is this going to impress anyone? Probably not, but if it comes up at Marie’s Crisis (a popular NYC show tunes piano bar and a refuge for us not-quite former theatre kids), of course, I’ll be proud enough to belt it.
That limbo is the same comfortable nook that Definitely Not Clue makes its home in, a loving satire on the ways no one really ever escapes high school. The jukebox musical on Twitch follows the cast of “Clues,” a knockoff version of high school theater staple “Clue” based on the board game. After Mean Girls alumnus Jonathan Bennet is kidnapped (actually played by Mean Girls alumnus Jonathan Bennet), the cast (stereotypes of high school drama kids grown up, such as a diva, a frustrated perpetual side character, and a clueless foreign exchange student) are sucked into their computers, playing a high-stakes game of “Clue” for their lives as they try to determine the culprit. Like Clue, the show has multiple endings with different characters taking the role of mastermind behind the evening’s proceedings.
The plot is utterly ridiculous. Magic goes totally unexplained, the motives are blurry at best, and the whole thing never really reaches any level of suspense. As a comedy, though, Definitely Not Clue is a playful, nostalgic delight with broad characters and snappy, reference-laden dialogue. It feels very much connected to the StarKid Productions-roots of a number of the performers, keeping a light and satirical tone.
What sets the piece apart from just any original musical streamed online is its clever use of medium. Definitely Not Clue uses light ARG-style puzzles, character interaction via the chat window, and audience voting throughout the production. The participants — from my observations, a group made up mostly of the same not-quite former theatre kids as the cast — combined with these features turn it into the same sort of event all theatre reunions eventually turn into: a reference-laden, one-upmanship bonanza. Think Twitch Plays Pokemon meets your high school production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
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Take, for example, our host and perpetrator Mr. Boddy (or, as he flamboyantly implores the audience with a jiggle, “Mr. Body-ody-ody”). During scene changes, he selects questions from the chat, gamely answering all of them with musical references and sly innuendo, then challenging the audience to vote on further torments for the rest of the cast. Both evenings I watched the production, the audience was overwhelmingly tempted by giving a cast member a camera filter to make him look like a potato.
While the chat, puzzles, and voting mechanisms didn’t seem particularly capable of taking the evening off of its rails, the minor agency it grants the audience keeps everyone invested and the mood lively. Watching the chat explode with sarcastic “Kappa Face” and “POGasm” emoticons and old StarKid memes, combined with the competitive thrust of the plot, makes the show feel closer to a gaming stream where you can cheer on your favorite players than a traditional musical.
One constantly entertaining element of the Definitely Not Clue script was the specificity of the jokes. While many were puns or slapstick that could be easily enjoyed by all, the script goes into a number of musical theatre deep cuts. A running gag on “Jr.” versions of increasingly inappropriate shows (Annie Jr., The Wizard of Oz Jr., Sweeney Todd Jr., Kiss of the Spider Woman Jr…) was consistently sidesplitting. Discussions of litigious theater publishers, box-step heavy choreography, and the peculiar sort of codependent theatre parents who want their kids to do awkward double acts with them felt true to life in the way a less clever script wouldn’t have.
Acting was uniformly strong, but special commendation is owed to Jaime Lyn Beatty in the role of Astrid, the thickly-accented, ABBA-quoting, Swedish foreign exchange student. Despite being almost nothing but a fountain of Mamma Mia jokes, she managed to ground the character as strangely believable and quickly became a chat favorite as her lines were echoed by the audiences as memes. Any time a knife was mentioned, the chat would erupt into a chorus of “A kah-nife?” I give additional kudos to Matthew Scott Montgomery as the aforementioned Mr. Boddy, whose improv chops kept the scene breaks rolling and individual showings feeling fresh for repeat audience members. These two were the standouts of a delightful cast, who all seem to have a real understanding of the differences in acting for streaming.
As theater continues to adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Definitely Not Clue stands as a perfect example of the type of theatre that’s emerging for at-home experiences. We go to the theater not just for profound and affecting experiences, but also for social interaction and delight. This production manages to capture that particular joy of theatre by embracing a new medium, not by attempting to force old material into new frameworks. I’m looking forward to future Pixel Playhouse productions and am eager to bring friends to their next one. I watched it, I liked it, now I’ve commented, and am thrilled to announce that, yes, I have also subscribed.
Definitely Not Clue has concluded its run. Recordings of the show are available to stream for free on the Pixel Playhouse Twitch page.
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