‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ at The Fisher goes a bit wrong
DETROIT, Mich–It’s not easy to criticize or critique a successful Broadway play when it sets out on tour. There is delicious irony, though, in doing so with a play called The Play The Goes Wrong.
This play, by Susie H.K. Brideswell (really, two middle names and initials?), is like Noises Off on steroids, a theatre company of questionable repute and quality that puts on a play where….well, you know what happens. Like Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, another obvious influence here, the play within the play is a send-up of Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap. Unlike Noises Off, though, there is no discernable plot here.
This amateur troupe, the Cornley University Drama Society, has managed to land a big-time theater for its “thriller” “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” a British whodunit. Before the play begins, cast and crew members are discovered roaming the aisles of the Fisher Theatre sorting out pre-curtain issues and problems. They are also in full view onstage, making last-minute adjustments to falling fireplace mantels and sticking doors. The fourth wall is the first casualty of this farce.
In fact, despite winning an Olivier Award, this show is more like a two-hour run of a Carol Burnett Show sketch in which she might have had a few cast members from Monty Python appearing. One can almost imagine Tim Conway and Harvey Korman in this play.
You know how Monty Python’s John Cleese is sometimes not that funny when he’s trying too hard to be funny? That’s The Play That Goes Wrong in too many moments for me.
The funniest bits are when the cheesy effects like paper cut-out snow comes through the window, and one of the cast inadvertently knocks out a support under an elevated platform, causing it to drop. The actors on the platform are left to perform some exquisite physical comedy—likewise when the mantle and wall hangings are falling down and the actors are trying to hold them up with their hands while they carry out their scenes.
If there is a weakness in the show, it is that the director and actors don’t know when the metaphorical volume knob is up too high. Yaegel T. Welch as Jonathan Harris/Charles Haversham, a corpse, is a good physical comedian, especially with his face. But he, with the director and writer’s collaboration, is too much alive and undead for the joke to really work. And he repeats a sight joke that was merely okay the first time we saw it. Likewise Ned Noyes as Max Bennett/Cecil Haversham breaks the fourth wall with regularity, grinning, beaming at the audience. Ick. Subtlety in farce humor works much better. Evan Alexander as Chris Bean as Inspector Carter/Director has a bellowing speech to the audience that goes on too long and turns from funny to phooey.
Don’t get me wrong. As wrong as the play goes for me, there are still plenty of laughs here. The audience was enjoying the show. I could tell from the laughter around me. But while Noises Off was written, this show seems brainstormed and manufactured in the marketing room, not the writer’s room.
There is good stuff here in this farce. It just feels like a better comedy writer with some benchmarks of Stoppard, W.C. Fields and The Marx Brothers, as well as Monty Python could make it legitimately 50% better and funnier.
It’s not easy to sell a play these days to big audiences unless it’s a mega-success revival, or it is a play with an established star—and even those in the latter category flop or play short of their intended run because the people don’t come. Most of today’s big-theatre audience wants big musicals that feel new, or at least modern, or they seem to want to go with the expectation that they won’t see anything “heavy.”
The Play That Goes Wrong continues to have a very successful run on Broadway and now will tour for years. There is plenty to laugh at, and the audience I was sitting with absolutely loved it. So, there’s that.
Still, I can’t help feeling a little blue exiting the theatre. Comedy without good writing is like a dinner created with processed/manufactured ingredients instead of fresh. People will eat it, but it doesn’t mean it’s good.
I love what Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote of this play: “Be advised that it is perfectly O.K., and possibly preferable, to see [this show] after a couple of drinks or in the glazed condition…”