The show must go on, even when the whole universe is against it. The actors in the play within The Play That Goes Wrong know no other way. The Olivier Award-winning play breathes fresh air into the notion of the Broadway play. There is a place for high drama, but if the key to a happy life is balance then thank goodness for Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields who have given us this comic gem. Few and far between are the shows that have the audience laughing from curtain up to curtain down. The plot is ridiculous, the set literally falls apart and the actors get just as many lines wrong as they do right, but that is all part of the plan. A flawlessly executed and acted plan. And how refreshing it is.
The Play That Goes Wrong is the story of a troupe of actors putting on the play "The Murder at Haversham Manor." The struggling troupe is thrilled to finally have discovered a show for which the number of characters matches the number of performers and their expectations are higher because of it – much higher than for their production of “Cat.” Unfortunately, there are a few things standing in their way and their skills may not match their ambition.
Hilarity breaks out before the show within the show even begins. Before the show, stage manager Annie calls upon an unsuspecting audience member to physically hold up the mantel that will not adhere to the set wall. And it continues from there. One of the most enjoyable running jokes is that the actor playing the dead Charles Haversham cannot play dead. When, after the other actors step on his “dead” hand lying on the ground, he tries to sneakily move it under the chaise to avoid any further pain, the uproar from the audience was one of the most genuine moments of enjoyment I’ve heard in a theater in many years. The hijinks continue. A personal favorite: a sword breaks (of course) but the actor continues as if it is intact, shouting, “ching, ching” and “swish, swipe” in place of the actual sound of swords clinking together. Throughout the entire evening, the laughter rarely diminished.
The cast is small but mighty. Anything less than complete commitment to the insanity would come across as disingenuous, but the tour cast is all in. Bear with me as I navigate the tricky waters of writing about actors who are portraying actors. Ned Noyes plays Max Bennett who portrays Cecil/gardener. Noyes hams it up as Max/Cecil, but in the best possible way. He grins, he bows during scenes and he eats up every reaction from the audience and uses it as fuel for his antics. Max is in love with himself on stage and Noyes plays it to perfection. Dennis (Scott Cote) plays the role of Perkins the Haversham Manor butler. Dennis does not have the best handle on pronunciation, or, really, his lines in general. His mispronunciation of ‘cyanide’ (ky-a-need-e) is so incorrect that, on the night of my performance, the audience reaction was delayed until another character corrected him. Once understood, the audience burst into laughter.
Perhaps the most extraordinary element of “wrongness” in the show is the set. Nigel Hook, the set original set designer, had quite a task to complete: design a set that will convincingly and precisely fall apart. The pre-show mantel shenanigans were only the beginning. Throughout the show, the set continues to fall apart, leading up to the moment at the end of the show when the walls fall down and the elevated platform that serves as a study loses its’ support beam and crashes to the stage floor. The gradual destruction is incredibly impressive. The planning and engineering required to create a set that falls apart and can be restored to its’ original form immediately after curtain call is hidden by the collapsing, crashing, falling and banging, but appreciation should be heaped upon the creative team and the backstage crew.
I could continue to gush for as long as Cecil could prance and bounce around the stage. That is to say, endlessly. Suffice it to say that The Play That Goes Wrong gets pretty much everything right. I know, I know, too easy. But Cecil would love that line.
