Clued In: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way at Second City 💛💛💛💛💛

Seen 10.02.2025

In another lifetime, I was a theatre maker and even reviewed performances for two separate publications (which explains some of the writings here dated before I entered the Substackiverse). I will occasionally be publishing a review of a performance, event, or broadcast I saw that is notable for one reason or another. If you are an organization seeking to add me to your press contact list, please email me directly. For anyone else wishing to skip these posts, I will tag them under “reviews” and will include this preamble at the top for easy opt-out. For an at-a-glance rating view, I’ll include an “out of seven” 💛 scale, but I hope the review paints a more complex and nuanced canvas than a simple rating scale, be it yellow emoji hearts.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve seen improv. Damn near blasphemy if you live in Chicago. The last time I stepped into The Second City space was just after the renovations, and I remember thinking the new layout didn’t encourage the kind of laughter that erupts when a room feels intimate. It was missing that packed-in, shoulder-to-shoulder, you-can’t-help-but-laugh-when-your-neighbor-does energy.

But honestly, the real reason I drifted away from improv and sketch had more to do with what felt like a homogenous approach to comedy: often political, and too often punching down for easy laughs.

Enter Clued In, stage left, in the aviary, with a candlestick teeny poking stick. Modeled after an Agatha Christie mystery, this improv show finds a familiar framing device that brings situational and universal laughter back into the form. Maybe I’ve been missing out on all the fun all these years. Are we finally back to being hilarious without it being at anyone’s expense? God, it’s refreshing.

Clued In Ensemble: Jason Stockdale, James Dugan, Simon Tessmer, Travis Stuebing, Laura Marsh, Molly Jones, and Bri Fitzpatrick.

Clued In: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way features seven actors and a pianist and, within 90 minutes, delivers a whole lot: suspense, double entendres, physical comedy, real-time detective work, and laughs. Many authentic, surprising, and delicious laughs. The ensemble was tight and clearly knew each other well. They were having a great time! Not only could we, the audience, feel it, but once in a while, they even cracked each other up.

Clued In Ensemble Travis Stuebing and Ryan Ben

I brought my son, a recent entry into ChiArts (don’t even get me started on the drama unfolding there right now), where he finds studying improv challenging. He thoroughly enjoyed himself, proving the show works multi-generationally. And he’s never even heard of Poirot!

Clued In Ensemble Jason Stockdale, Ryan Ben and Alonso Ramirez

Our favorite scenes included a masterful execution of the hard-boiled questioning under the spotlight, led by the detective-du-jour chosen randomly by an audience member from the players’ cards:

This was the scene where the cast shone, feeding off each other’s skills and building more and more context and relationship, to the effect of side-splitting laughter. Another highlight was when the character of Sheila, performed by Cynthia Banger, had to argue with herself. I don’t know if that was scripted or if the cast was actually missing an actor that night and it became a running inside joke. It didn’t matter; it was still hilarious.

My son and I talked a lot afterwards about how fast-paced the acting was and how quickly 90 minutes flew by. For him, it was impressive to see performers this quick-witted, handling complex prior context so effortlessly. We also noticed some of the “rules” at play, such as shutting doors to signal someone else stealing focus. Most importantly, we talked about how much liberty the actors had to explore their situations and how much they trusted one another.

Overall, this production makes for great light-hearted Halloween fare. I was wrong to think the intimacy of The Second City space diminished laughs. What a perfect way to launch Spooktober!

For more information on dates, times, and tickets, check out High Stakes Productions.