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    ‘Gun & Powder’ Review: Twin Vigilantes Stake Claim to the American West

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    The musical traces the story of Black twin sisters who pass as white, and exact their own form of justice for the crime of slavery, in 19th-century Texas.The title of “Gun & Powder,” a thrillingly original new musical about mixed-race twin sisters who cut a path through Texas in 1893, refers to their travel essentials: a shrewd parting gift from their sharecropping mother and a touch of makeup to brighten their toasted-ivory complexions.The legend of Mary and Martha Clarke, who purportedly robbed white people while themselves passing for white, stretches back generations for the show’s book writer and lyricist, Angelica Chéri. She based this rousing Western, now playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., on her great-great-aunts. (“But you know how family stories do,” sings a gospel Greek chorus of narrators, “so we believe the story is mostly true.”)With a wide-ranging, powerhouse score by Ross Baum, “Gun & Powder” refashions a classic myth of the American West — white men who fancy themselves above the law — into an irresistible revenge fantasy: Mary and Martha, who go from toiling in the fields to coolly stealing money made off their ancestors’ backs, aren’t outlaws but vigilantes, exacting justice for the crime of slavery.It’s another triumph that their extraordinary history, directed with vibrant panache by Stevie Walker-Webb, assumes the form of a big-throated American musical filled with star-making roles for Black women.Mary (Ciara Renée) and Martha (Liisi LaFontaine) seem much alike at first, driven by a shared affection for their mother, Tallulah (Jeannette Bayardelle), whose white lover left her brokenhearted with their daughters and under another white man’s boot. The bond among the three women forms a compelling emotional throughline, and there’s stirring harmony among the actors’ dynamite vocals.Jeannette Bayardelle, center, with Renée, left, LaFontaine, right, and other cast members. The production features belt-heavy R&B numbers that the cast sends soaring, our critic writes.Jeremy DanielWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Clue’ Review: A Whodunit That Looks a Lot Like a Board Game

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      This Paper Mill Playhouse production is a welcome throwback to an era of physical comedy.“Clue,” the campy 1985 film based on the popular board game, became a cult classic because of an all-star cast delivering delicious mile-a-minute quips. A new stage production, adapted by Sandy Rustin from Jonathan Lynn’s screenplay, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, may not be the out-and-out hoot the film is, but the show is a very fun, very silly 1950s-set whodunit that strikes some contemporary parallels on the way to its grand reveal.As the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings drone on a television set, the eager-to-please butler, Wadsworth (an agile Mark Price), prepares for the arrival of his boss’s six guests, invited under undisclosed circumstances and each assigned aliases for the night.There’s a handsy shrink, Professor Plum (Michael Kostroff); the vivacious madame, Miss Scarlet (Sarah Hollis); and Mr. Green (Alex Mandell), a gay Republican who is hiding the fact that he didn’t vote for Eisenhower in the last election. These three play straight against the production’s broader comics: the dimwitted Col. Mustard (John Treacy Egan, with excellent timing); Mrs. White (Donna English), a multiple divorcée; and Mrs. Peacock (Kathy Fitzgerald, hilarious), a senator’s wife with a drinking problem who dresses like an American Girl doll. (Jen Caprio did the costumes.)They soon discover that their ties to Washington, ranging from the morally murky to the criminal, have landed them on the wrong end of a blackmailing scheme. After their host, Mr. Boddy (Graham Stevens), arrives, he adds McCarthyism blacklisting to their worries. The lights turn off, things — specifically a candlestick, a wrench, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope and a dagger — go bump in the night, and Mr. Boddy winds up dead, with the dwindling survivors scrambling to make sense of it all.“Is this about the Red Scare?” Mr. Green whimpers. Released in the Reagan era, the film was a pointed satire of conservative hypocrisy. Though the stage version begins with a strong undercurrent of paranoia, which reads believably as both Covid-19 apprehensions and a paralyzing fear of outing yourself as possibly cancelable, it mostly drops politics once the “big scary mansion” high jinks get underway. The plot’s whodunit structure is a surefire farce setup, but given the state of U.S. affairs, the production could have used a stronger political backbone.Casey Hushion directs with a steady eye toward possible laughs, and Lee Savage’s set conveys an appropriately stuffy mansion, with hidden passages and falling chandeliers. The finely tuned cast scurrying about to convince a stray cop (Kolby Kindle) that the propped-up corpses are merely having a good time is a welcome throwback to an era of physical comedy that’s been mostly usurped by sarcasm.Wadsworth’s conclusive explanations — a clever take on the film’s notorious alternate endings, which played at different theaters — make a case that what was then dismissed as a marketing gimmick was actually an early predecessor of today’s multiverses. As those left standing rush to blame one another, in different possible scenarios, they mirror our own increasingly selfish desire to think our perception as being the correct one. Like the board game, and life itself, the play winds up making only one perception true — but thank goodness this one’s fun.ClueThrough Feb. 20 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More