Category: Art & Theater

Clue comes to life in Concord

Who killed Mr. Boddy, with what weapon, and where? Was it Miss Peacock wielding a lead pipe in the library, or maybe Colonel Mustard with a dagger in the dining room? To anyone who’s ever played an iconic board game, this is a familiar question. It’s also the basis for a unique experience hosted by the Capitol Center for the Arts.

CLUE: A Walking Mystery invites participants, grouped into six five-person teams, to solve the now-cold case of Boddy’s demise. The quest begins at the historic Kimball House in downtown Concord, as two “butlers” who were there long ago when the crime was committed provide instructions to the sleuths-for-a-day.

The house was sold after the murder, they’re told, with all the furniture auctioned off. The butlers believe that in some hutch, dresser or desk is the key to identifying the criminal. Each item is now in a local business, like Teatotaller Café, Gibson’s Bookstore or the Barley House. Everyone is then handed an auction catalog.

The detectives go forth on a walk through the city, questing for answers, solving puzzles as they go.

“It’s like an escape room, but it’s broken up into nine different pieces around the city,” Kevin Hammonds, one of the game’s creators, said by phone recently. Hammonds added that it’s ideal for folks who find escape rooms claustrophobic.

“This is the opposite of being locked in a room,” he said. “You’re walking around, you’re getting a lot of great exercise and experiencing the best of Concord. It’s a great thing to do as a family, a group outing or for team-building. The puzzles are really original and creative and tricky.”

The immersive experience began during the pandemic as a way for L.A.-based touring company Right Angle Entertainment to keep employees busy. Initially it involved engaging suspects along the way, but that proved unwieldy. SoCal puzzle designers The Wild Optimists came up with a new vision. The retooled CLUE debuted in Chicago and ran for six months.

Hammonds scouted Concord as a potential location and loved what he found.

“The thing about Chicago is that it visits all these iconic places but it’s spread out,” he said. “We tried to keep it under a mile, but it still takes some time and walking. Concord is a compact digestible version. It’s not quite as sprawled out, but it’s still incredibly satisfying.”

Choosing where to put furniture “was literally me walking up and down the streets of Concord,” he said. “You have to find a place that has the same hours as the game, will fit a piece of furniture, and also accommodate 30 people every 20 minutes to come in and play the game. … It also has to kind of fit the Clue vibe and aesthetic.”

The cast members “all love improv,” he continued. “Most of them are drama college students, but we have a college professor who loves murder mysteries and Clue, and he also acts part-time. I have another butler that’s a great improv actor that does a lot of work on Saturday Night Live.”

Similarly, participants are encouraged to follow a penchant for cosplay at the event.

“When the butlers greet them, they inform them that they are descendants of the OG suspects, like Miss Scarlet, or Colonel Mustard,” Hammonds said. “In Chicago we had a lot of people come dressed up as those characters or in those colors.”

Unlike the board game, there are no winners.

“It’s not a contest,” Hammonds said. “You’re not hunting for where you go next. It tells you go to Gibson’s Bookstore; this is the address; this is a picture of the bookcase. We also say, while you’re at Teatotaller Café looking for the kitchen hutch, enjoy 10 percent off, or have lunch at the Barley House…. We encourage people to stop and enjoy whatever each business has to offer.”

CLUE: A Walking Mystery
When: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through June 16, multiple time slots
Where: Kimball House, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $34 at ccanh.com

Celebrating creativity in Sunapee

Wine and chocolate will flow amidst paintings, photography and piano music at an upcoming event in New London to showcase the Lake Sunapee Region Center for the Arts. The Raise a Glass to the Arts! reception will serve as a reminder of the Center’s many efforts to support expression throughout the area, which include micro-galleries in local businesses, festivals, seminars, concerts and youth programs.

“We wanted to create a wonderful evening to celebrate with our donors and members, our artists and our community, what the arts are all about when it comes to the Center,” CFA Executive Director Dina Stahlheber said by phone recently. “It’s a moment to step back and think about the wonderful talent here, and all the different things that are able to come together.”

The Center’s mission encompasses visual, performing and literary arts, Stahlheber said.

“They’re very closely intertwined, yet each one of themselves are quite vast,” she said. “Many of our painters are poets and many of our poets are performers or musicians. We have singer-songwriters that dip their toes into both writing and music. We have quite a variety here.”

She envisions the event, happening at Colby-Sawyer College’s Wheeler Hall, as a way to “celebrate these three different key aspects of what the organization does, as well as its love and focus on youth. We also offer some great scholarships, school grant programs, and activities for our youth and families.” To underscore this cross-pollination, ticket holders will be entered to win a pair of seats to the New London Barn Playhouse’s June production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Stahlheber added that a past scholarship winner will perform at the gathering, along with veteran pianist and composer Will Ogmundson. This and other CFA endeavors serve to highlight the importance of human expression, something that’s particularly critical in an age that sees it threatened by machine learning.

The latter is a topic that Stahlheber spoke eloquently about in a press release last March.

“In a landscape increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and algorithms, the essence of human experience embedded within artistic expression becomes ever more poignant,” she said. “While technology can assemble stories and generate visually stunning images, it cannot convey the personal journey behind the creation of art.”

During the interview, Stahlheber was quick to point out that she’s no Luddite.

“I appreciate technology,” she said. “I just want to be sure that we don’t forget or lose sight of the fact that artificial intelligence still cannot communicate the human essence of the arts as humans can.”

She continued, “AI can replicate stories and even make them very moving, but at the end of the day, there’s something about someone having lived … when they share their story, the pain and glory of overcoming a situation, that is what’s authentic, powerful and meaningful.”

Stahlheber took over the reins at CFA just over a year ago and has focused many of her efforts on messaging. “I wanted to be more intentional about what we’re doing, why are we doing it, and how it fits into our mission,” she explained. “Not everyone in the community realizes how much we’ve done and the large role it plays, the many places and connections the Center for the Arts has in this region.”

To that end, an event later this summer will shine a light not only on the CFA’s work but also on the region it serves.

“I am so excited for our July Arts Week in Sunapee Harbor,” Stahlheber said. “It has been a year-long planning session with a group of wonderful organizations, [and] we have been trying to put together a really special weekend. But also, to promote Sunapee Harbor. It is super-beloved, but not everyone, even in the surrounding area, remembers it’s here.”

Raise a Glass to the Arts!
When: Saturday, May 18, 7 p.m.
Where: Wheeler Hall, 541 Main St., New London
Tickets: $55 members, $65 non-members at centerfortheartsnh.org

Tuck Everlasting latest musical from Powerhouse

An upcoming show at Laconia’s Colonial Theatre explores the idea of eternal life, how desire to live forever can be all-consuming, and what the consequences of achieving immortality might be.

Tuck Everlasting began as a children’s novel by New Hampshire writer Natalie Babbitt that later became a movie in 2002. A Broadway adaptation was nominated for a Tony but only lasted for 39 performances. Fortunately, Bryan Halperin, who runs the Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative with his wife, Johanna, caught one and was enamored.

It was part of “a string of shows we saw for a couple of years where we really enjoyed them and they all flopped,” he said by phone recently. Halperin has learned firsthand how a show can come up short in New York but make it elsewhere. Last year he directed Captains Courageous and won for Best Musical at the New Hampshire Theatre Awards, even though an off-Broadway production of it opened and closed quickly.

“How something does on Broadway is not necessarily reflective of it as a musical property that actually moves people, and people love,” he said.

Tuck Everlasting, he continued, is an uplifting musical, and wonderful songs are just one reason. Particularly moving is a 10-minute dance sequence that traces the arc of the main character’s life. “It’s the climax of the musical, without singing, just music and dance,” he said. “We wanted to do it someday, and this was the day.”

Choreographer Meg King will oversee dancing for Powerhouse’s three-day run.

“That’s the most exciting thing for me in this production,” Halperin said. “Meg is doing some legitimate lyrical ballet dance that we don’t usually get in musicals [and] the last sequence is astounding to watch; people in the cast get tears in their eyes every time they see the dancing.”

In 2004, the Halperin family relocated from Massachusetts to the Lakes Region and opened the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, which they ran for 10 years. After, Halperin said, “we were nomads for a while, doing stuff with Hatbox and Community Players of Concord. Then we got kind of recruited out of our full-time retirement to start up again.”

Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative was formed in 2020 as a way to continue a program of performances at Belknap Mill and got its name from the historic facility. It became an independent nonprofit last year. It has also been the Colonial’s resident theater company since it opened.

“We constantly pinch ourselves that we get to do theater and rehearse in this beautiful space.” Halperin said. “For a 750-seat theater, it has an intimacy to it…. We feel very lucky that it’s our home.”

Powerhouse always looks to spur involvement in its work, for actors and people who love theater.

“To really emphasize the community building nature of community theater,” Halperin said. “It’s about collecting people into the family, finding ways for them to shine on stage no matter what role they’re in, and surrounding them with high-quality production values.”

One example is the annual performance of A Christmas Carol. Over the years, they’ve added a choir that performs prior to the show and later adds vocal color from the boxes. “That allowed more people to get involved than we could fit on the stage in character roles,” Halperin said. “We try to find ways to engage as many people as possible for each production.”

Looking back, Bryan and Johanna are still happy with their decision to move north.

“We do think about how our life changed by making that choice to leave our careers and start a theater company,” he said. “But the rewards of community and artistic expression, being in a job that our children could be involved with and grow to love as well, far exceeded our expectations. It hasn’t always been easy, but it has definitely been emotionally rewarding.”

Halperin encouraged people to come out for Tuck Everlasting.

“Everyone involved gets such joy out of singing the music and telling the story,” he said. “It’s a great Mother’s Day weekend, take the family show, kids of all ages are appropriate. I’m pretty sure you will love it if you come to see it.”

Tuck Everlasting
When: Friday, May 10, and Saturday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, May 12, at 2 p.m.
Where: Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia
Tickets: $18 to $22 at etix.com

Featured Photo: Nikolai Fernandez and Maci Johnson as Jesse Tuck and Winnie Foster in Tuck Everlasting. Courtesy photo.