More Theatre

There is a long theatrical tradition in Britain of taking the piss out of things that are otherwise treated very seriously. That tradition, stretching from pantomime through the CARRY ON films and MONTY PYTHON, is alive and well in THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG, the enormously successful British farce created by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, opening next month at the Garstin Centre for the Arts in Dundas.

Created in 2010 by the Mischief Theatre Company, formed by several graduates of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, the play began in modest circumstances above a London pub. Its earliest version was presented at the Old Red Lion Theatre before expanding into the comedy phenomenon it eventually became.

At its heart, THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG is a parody of that great community theatre staple, the English country house murder mystery. The fictional Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society is presenting THE MURDER AT HAVERSHAM MANOR, supposedly written by Susie H.K. Brideswell, complete with a grand old mansion, a dead body, six suspects and an inspector determined to uncover the truth. So far, so conventional, and nothing out of the ordinary…

What makes the play work is that the murder mystery is only half the story. The real comedy comes from the members of the Cornley Players themselves, the amateur performers struggling to keep their increasingly disastrous production alive. Props disappear, cues go wrong, scenery misbehaves and actors find themselves battling circumstances that become more ridiculous with every scene.

The great achievement of THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG is that the apparent disorder requires remarkable discipline from its performers. Every fall, collapsing piece of scenery, misplaced prop and badly timed entrance must happen at precisely the right moment. The production resembles a carefully choreographed dance in which everything has been designed to look completely accidental.

The result is extremely meta, essentially one enormous theatrical in-joke. Anyone who has spent time in amateur or community theatre will recognize the panic of missed cues, awkward entrances and backstage disasters. The more you know about how theatre works, the more there is to enjoy.

Like any successful farce, however, apparent chaos demands precision. The cast must maintain a relentless pace while making each accident appear spontaneous. The actors are not simply playing characters in a murder mystery. They are playing actors playing those characters, complete with egos, rivalries and varying levels of theatrical competence.

The production also depends heavily on its setting. A large two-storey country house set becomes almost another character, creating much of the physical comedy and providing the machinery for an escalating succession of disasters.

After its small beginnings, THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG transferred to the West End, where it became an enormous success, and later reached Broadway. Its popularity also launched further Mischief productions using similar comic ideas and recurring theatrical conventions.

For Dundas Little Theatre, mounting the play is an ambitious undertaking. Few community companies have the physical space, technical resources or backstage personnel required to make this kind of controlled destruction work convincingly.

That is what makes the production particularly intriguing. THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG may look like complete chaos, but underneath the collapsing scenery and theatrical disasters lies an extraordinarily demanding piece of stagecraft. If everything goes according to plan, audiences should have the pleasure of watching absolutely everything appear to go wrong.

For audiences, that carefully engineered catastrophe is the joke, and the reason this farce continues to attract theatres everywhere. I like this show a great deal, in fact I’m a rabid fan of it! And in fact I think I might be attending every single performance.

MORE THEATRE