‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ is a mess in the best way possible
The play has many spin-offs, and most will make you fall off the chair laughing if done well
There are so many ways for a show to be funny — wit (Oscar Wilde), rhyme (Stephen Sondheim), snark (Saturday Night Live), stupid (America’s Funniest Home Videos) — which we respond to differently with smiles, smirks, snorts, the contemptuous Ha!, and the cute Aww.
1812 Productions’ show, The Play that Goes Wrong, currently at Plays and Players Theatre through the holiday season, is ham on wry. It invites all kinds of laughter, especially the LOL kind. Having seen this show in three different productions over the years, I can just about guarantee that anybody from grandchildren to grandparents and all in between will have a good time.
Here’s the story: An (very) amateur drama society is putting on an English murder mystery, complete with mustachioed inspectors and velvet dinner jackets. The play is called The Murder at Haversham Manor, and it is the director’s “dayboo.” (There is a running gag with mispronounced words). Note that the Playbill is called “Playbob.”
The show rides on its excellent cast (Justin Jain, Karen Peakes, Scott Greer, Anthony Lawton, Michael Doherty, Melanie Cotton, and Rain Diaz) pretending to be hapless unprofessional actors as everything in their show goes wrong: misplaced props, endless spit-takes, collapsing sets, and people knocked unconscious.
Once we discover that we don’t have to worry about these accidents, we’re free to nearly fall off our own chairs laughing.
The rehearsals with these brave and agile actors must have been both scary and hilarious as the director (that mistress of comic timing, Jennifer Childs) kept it all together.
But it’s the scenic designer (Colin McIlvaine) and properties designer (Liz McDonald) who deserve kudos galore. They recreate the original design of this mayhem that was created by Nigel Hook for the 2012 London “dayboo” run at the Old Red Lion Theatre. It was then scaled up for its 2017-19 Broadway run, which earned Hook a Drama Desk Award and a Tony Award nomination.
Written by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, and Jonathan Sayer, The Play That Goes Wrong has now taken on a life of its own. The writers have staged three offshoots — The Goes Wrong Show, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong — and released them on DVDs. But watching the farcical mistakes on a screen is not nearly as funny as watching it live in a theater. This show at Plays and Players will have you mopping your eyes after laughing for two hours of very funny fun.
The Play That Goes Wrong
(Community/Arts) Watch excellent actors pretend to be really terrible at their jobs in this hilarious production. Running time: 2 hours with one interval.
⌚️ Through Dec. 29 at Plays and Players Theatre, 📍1714 Delancey St, Phila.; 🌐 1812productions.org/the-play-that-goes-wrong-2024
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