The Play That Goes Wrong

The Play That Goes Wrong (Take 2) – Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place – February 8, 2022

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No hitches this time. (My NDA prevents me from revealing what really happened in January.)

Though some of the action in the show loses a little when you know what’s going to happen (having seen an earlier production in December 2018), the fact that the performance is all about the humor, without any unnecessary regard to plot or character development, enables the excellent physical comedy to hold up on its own (kudos to the cast, set designer, and prop maker). Moreover, on one occasion, I, and everyone else in the audience, practically jumped out of their seats in reaction to a gag, even though the underlying premise took a second to process.

The theater was about half full, heavily weighted toward the front, which enabled me to have a row to myself, as it always should be. The theater took masking seriously, with an usher holding a sign that said “keep masks up.” On one occasion, during intermission, I saw the usher approach an audience member to tell that person to lift theirs. And though the play features some audience interaction, I’m quite sure (or am I?) that this particular moment was not in the script.

Bottom line – it was great to be someplace surrounded by laughter (not caused by me having toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe).

The Plans [sic] That Go Wrong – Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place – January 4, 2022

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A little over three years ago I wrote glowingly about The Play That Goes Wrong, a rib-tickler that leaves you with the kind of joy that everyone needs these days.

Given the latest onslaught by those nefarious people behind the Greek alphabet, I was more than ready for another dose of The Play’s theatrical hijinks, which I might describe as a Noel Coward version of Waiting for Guffman meets the Marx Brothers.

So I packed up my KN95, one approved by the Korean government and Amazon, along with proof of a lifetime worth of vaccinations, including those for shingles, just in case.

But, alas, The Play That Goes Wrong went even further wrong than originally scripted. Was the show cancelled due to an outbreak of Covid among the cast’s pets? Did I slip and fall on the icy sidewalk, tearing whatever cartilage might be left in my body, and get taken to the emergency room, where I waited for x-rays for 15 hours, writing this blog, while the staff tended to several hundred people with the sniffles? Did I go to the theater on the wrong night like I did for Ragtime in 2018? Or other, the answer most often correct on online AARP quizzes?

Just like it was every night of the 17-year-run of Shear Madness at the Blackstone Hotel, I’m going to let the viewer, in this case the reader, decide the outcome. I will only add that The Play That Goes Wrong will be here through February 13, so you may yet see a review from me that is only slightly more about the production itself.

The Play That Goes Wrong – Oriental Theater – December 11, 2018

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While the comparison to the play Noises Off is obvious, if it weren’t for all the farcical humor of The Play That Goes Wrong (The Play), one might think of Michael Crichton’s original Westworld, “the ultimate resort, where nothing can possibly go wrong, go wrong . . . .”, and yet everything does.

So, to paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as it might apply to the play, The Murder at Faversham Manor (The Murder) within The Play: How does thee go wrong? Let me count the ways.

Forget the occasional forgotten line, The Murder goes into full Brannon Braga, Star Trek; The Next Generation, Cause and Effect episode, time loop mode with the actors becoming increasingly irritated as they can’t find a way to stop repeating the same lines. If it weren’t so funny, I would have thought it was written into the show as filler.

And then there was the set, or what was left of it by the end of the show. The comic timing of The Play is not limited to the actors. So, while the actors in The Murder break the fourth wall, the walls in The Murder almost break the actors, creating the need for some deliciously funny stand-in work by the crew of The Murder. I would love a behind-the-scenes tour of The Play by its crew, not the dangerously inept crew of The Murder, to see how they manipulate everything.

Query, by the way, are the actors in The Play breaking the fourth wall when the actors in The Murder are speaking to their audience, which, of course, happens to be the same as The Play’s audience?

In the end, despite set deconstruction, doors banging into heads, and actors in The Murder engaging in foul play, the only real injuries are to the ribs of The Play’s audience members, who are bent over in laughter.