The mayhem begins even before the curtain goes up on The Play That Goes Wrong, a hilarious new comedy that transferred to Off-Broadway this spring following its Broadway run. As audiences search for their seats, stagehands are murmuring aloud about a dog that has gone missing. Onstage, more stagehands can be seen doing final prep work, such as trying to mend a broken mantlepiece. Even an audience member is recruited to help hold the set together during these last-minute adjustments. With his tongue deftly in cheek, a narrator appears to greet the audience and thank them for showing up. A fictional drama society is attempting to present a 1920s murder-mystery, called “The Murder at Haversham Manor.” He announces that, thankfully, there are enough members of the drama society to fulfill all the parts, unlike some of the previous productions, such as: “Cat,” “The Lion and the Wardrobe,” and “James and the Peach,” or “James, Where’s Your Peach?”. In this play-within-a-play, all manner of things to go haywire before the first few lines are uttered. Props break (or fall off the walls), doors either stick or slowly open on their own, and floor boards collapse. This is a pratfall-lover’s dream, as all sorts of slapstick comedy routines are played out as the cast valiantly tries to continue the play. Even an actor who has been knocked unconscious is replaced in mere minutes by a stagehand in a thrown-together outfit and wig, carrying a script to keep the conversation going. As the play wears on, the actors grow more and more desperate to keep things on track. When a second-story “room” loses its underpinnings and the floor starts to sag toward the audience, an actor barely manages to keeps props in place before he rolls off the uneven floor. Meanwhile, other actors are dropping lines, repeating their lines, mispronouncing words, stepping on fingers and being physically ejected from the stage. The whole mess erupts in the set’s total demolition in the play’s final moments. The set literally collapses around the ears of the cast, just as the final words are uttered. Curtain closes. The Play that Goes Wrong began life in London in 2012, eventually winning the 2015 Lawrence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. Following its first United Kingdom tour, the play opened on Broadway in April 2017 at the Lyceum Theatre. The show featured the original London cast, and it won a 2017 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Play. It closed on January 6, 2019 and subsequently reopened at Off-Broadway’s New World Stages. The play has been translated and licensed for production in more than 20 countries and is currently on a US national tour. It continues to be staged in London through at least May 2020 The energy, dexterity and comic precision of the cast is what sets apart The Play That Goes Wrong from similar collaborations. The humor may be a bit obvious for some, but even the most mundane comic bits tickle the funny bone all the same. This is a rare production in that it has as much to offer delighted youngsters as it is their amused parents.
