One night in 1954, six strangers find themselves invited to a dinner party by a mysterious host at Boddy Manor. They find out they are all being blackmailed and are all connected to one another somehow, by the same person. Soon, people in the house begin to die – but who is killing them?
To find out more about this classic ‘whodunnit’ Platte County High School’s theatre students can show you what happens next when they present their play, Clue, Feb. 16, 17 and 18 at 7 p.m. at Wilson Auditorium at Platte County High School.
Theatre teacher, Erica Glidewell, who has been teaching at PCHS for four years, said the students are very excited about opening night. “However, with every show there is this nervous excitement where they are thrilled about the show, but also nervous about the ‘what ifs.’”
She always tells the students that theatre is meant to represent real life on the stage and that it is a live, living, breathing thing and that things will happen, but it comes down to how the students adapt on stage and support one another.
Prior to teaching at the high school she worked for CYT Kansas City, where she directed, taught and managed their dance studio while she finished her master’s degree. Her classes include about 120 students and include 20 inducted thespians and 40 to 60 students involved in shows that take place after school. Eighteen students have been cast in the Clue show.
The play is based on a board game that was created by British musician, Anthony Pratt during World War II. The game was released in the U.S. in 1949, and is based on English country estate murder-mystery parties.
The Clue movie came out in 1985, and the Clue musical premiered in 1995.
The PCHS auditions for Clue were in November and rehearsal began in December. The cast gets about nine weeks to work through the entire show. The fast-paced murder-mystery comedy has proven to be a lot of fun for the students to work on.
“When selecting the show as part of our season, we knew that the students would be excited about it, but we were also very excited that the community would recognize the name and hopefully come out to see it,” Glidewell said.
Clue has been on the top-10 most produced high school plays for several years, along with Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery, Mousetrap.
For the dinner and show on Friday, Feb. 18, the theatre department has partnered with the Northland Career Center culinary program and the students will be making an Italian dinner from scratch.
“We are so grateful for their partnership and for our Thespian Parent Group who are helping to organize this dinner,” Glidewell said. “We have been wanting to do this for a few years, but this year everything aligned.”
The six ‘players’ of the game in the play Clue will be Maddy Darst as Scarlet, Brock Vignery as Mr. Green, Natalie Shepherd as Mrs. White, Nathan Smiley as Colonel Mustard, April Bobowski as Mrs. Peacock and Sam Young as Professor Plum. They all meet for a mysterious dinner at the mansion of Mr. Boddy, played by Kaiser Sutton, where they meet their real host for the evening, Wadsworth the butler, played by Sam Ragone.
Glidewell said there are challenges with every show the theatre department does such as working with all the students’ schedules since they are involved in many activities. But for the show Clue, the biggest challenges have been absences with illnesses, including COVID, along with the show itself.
“The show is a comedy gold mine and the timing, jokes, and slapstick humor have to be just right, with the actors, props, sets, and lighting, Glidewell said. “So getting all of the elements together just right has been really challenging for this show, but a great learning curve for all of our students involved.”
As with most programs, the biggest challenge during planning and rehearsal has been keeping everyone healthy.
“It is hard to produce a show in nine weeks time (that’s the typical turn-around from a licensing company for a show) when you have multiple kids gone for a week, two weeks, etc. and then it repeats for other students in the cast/crew,” Glidewell said. “We have had plan A, B, C, and then some, for the last few years. We have been very lucky that we have still been able to pivot plans but still produce performing arts pieces for our students over the last few years. I am so proud and grateful for our students and parents for helping us through these times.”
Glidewell fell in love with theatre in high school and then went to Kansas State University where she majored in Theatre Performance. She then was involved in theatre in North Carolina with Burning Coal Theatre Company as well as in Kansas City, with multiple theatre companies on and off stage. Her students often ask what her favorite role on stage was.
“It’s so hard to pick a favorite because you fall in love with each character that you play, but I would have to say that it was playing the role of Kate Jerome in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs,” Glidewell said. “It is a wonderful show that really challenged me as an actor and I got to do it alongside my now, lifelong best friends.”
She believes that Platte County is very lucky to have so many talented kids in so many activities.
“Every once in a while, you see kids that come through your program that just have the ‘it’ factor, where you know they will go very far if they stick with it, and I feel really lucky to say that we have many students in the Fine Arts Department that have that,” Glidewell said. “I am a teacher, so I love the process of teaching students and watching them grow. For a production, I love that moment where on stage and off stage you start to realize that they don’t need you. There is a moment when the shows really truly become student led. I love that moment because they have such ownership of what they have created.”
The show will be performed Feb. 16-18 at 7 p.m. The house opens for seating at 6:30 p.m. for general seating. Tickets are only sold online at www.pchstheatre.com for $10 a ticket. The dinner show on Feb. 18 is sold out.