To begin with, let’s affirm that if you attend The Play That Goes Wrong, now at the Cleveland Play House, you will be surrounded with laughter for most of the play’s 150-minute run time. The question is: How much of that laughter will be coming from you?
This play-within-a-play focuses on opening night at the so-called Cornley Drama Society and their production of “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” a creaky 1920s-era whodunit. But as the title of the larger play promises, everything goes wrong with the set, the actors, the script, and even a hapless audience member who is dragged into the proceedings.
The performers in this CPH endeavor energetically go about the business of having their motley mansion fall to pieces around themselves as they gamely try to soldier on through stuck doors, falling picture frames, intra-cast tensions, and even more catastrophic collapses.
Eventually as this two-act enterprise continues, it becomes apparent that the actors themselves are playing second fiddle to the set construction itself. This is illustrated right at the start when an audience member is invited on stage to help with a troublesome mantel piece. The laughter in that pre-show bit is just as hearty as the laughter later on, which tells you something.
And yes, there is plenty of laughter. I was sitting next to several young kids from one family and they were hooting with delight at every bopped head, stepped-upon fingers and other bits of physical humor nabbed from sources such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and The Three Stooges.
This rough-hewn comedy concoction was written by a trio of fellows—Henry Lewis, Henry Shields and Jonathan Sayer—and is a poor man’s version of the iconic “Noises Off” by Michael Frayn. In Frayn’s sublime “theater disaster” farce, the audience is presented with a touring theatrical company performing the first act of a run-of-the-mill mystery that is presented three times: First in a tech rehearsal, second at a matinée performance, and third at an exhausted performance ten weeks later. It is hilarious since you know how it’s supposed to look when done without glitches.
However in TPTGW, the playwrights have dispensed with the set up and cut to the carnage, which is a bit refreshing but largely ineffective in terms of true farce. The stripped-down play-within-a-play can’t truly blossom without more information about what the cast is actually trying to accomplish.
For instance, the audience is mystified when, at one point, the actors keep repeating their lines (it’s because one actor can’t remember his next line). But we don’t know that so the bit flounders, as do several others. But not to worry, there will soon be something falling off a wall or somebody getting clocked on the noggin so the laffs can resume apace.
In this review, we will dispense with the traditional recognition of specific actor performances. Indeed, the cast itself seems to sense they are of secondary importance. And bless their hearts, they try hard (in some cases way too hard) in an attempt to compete with this cavalcade of Home Depot-inspired lumber and hardware catastrophes. But their thespian efforts pale in comparison to those of scenic designer Czerton Lim, technical director Bill Langenhop, stage carpenter Emma Sherban, and fight and stunt director Jason Paul Tate.
As director Melissa Rain Anderson says in her program note, “…it’s important to remember that these characters are really trying to put on a genuine mystery for you.” And she is absolutely right, that is what they should do. Unfortunately, Anderson does not direct her actors in that manner. And without that connection to reality, all the slapstick shtick in the world won’t make up for an ounce of genuine wit.
In sum, The Play That Goes Wrong will make many in the audience laugh till their sides ache, while others may feel like they’ve attended a limply amusing theatrical mugging.
The Play That Goes Wrong
Through March 3 at the Cleveland Play House, Playhouse Square, Allen Theatre, 1407 Euclid Ave., clevelandplayhouse.com, 216-241-6000.
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Christine Howey
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