Producing a theatrical production takes a lot of time, effort and skill to pull off. You spend years putting everything together, then finally you open to the public and hope that everything goes according to plan. Well, what if I were to tell you there is a play that explores this exact idea. However, instead of everything going right, everything goes horribly wrong.
The Play That Goes Wrong follows the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society as they open their newest production, The Murder at Haversham Manor. After the success of previous productions of ‘The Lion and The Wardrobe’, ‘Cat’, and ‘James and the Peach’, Chris Bean (portrayed by Jonathan Martin), the director of the Drama Society, announces how excited the company is to introduce the new murder mystery play to an audience. However, not everything plays out as expected and the result is one of the funniest theatrical shows I have ever seen.
Originally Directed by Mark Bell (London) with local direction by Nick Purdie, The Play That Goes Wrong has opened at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre and I was lucky enough to catch their matinee performance on Sunday the 14th of September.
The Play That Goes Wrong begins before you even enter the theatre with a giant poster on the Athenaeum Theatre’s exterior hanging upside down. As I entered the theatre, a sign placed at the entrance stated that Tom Cruise will not be in today’s performance. I was already chuckling, and I hadn’t even taken my seat!
As the theatre doors open, the stage was in full view, showing what appeared to be a lounge. A fireplace at the back and an elevated platform that resembled an office. In the balcony booth to the left of stage was a control panel highlighted with a dedicated spotlight. Before long, the cast appearing as stagehands began to enter the stage. Up in the booth, Edmund ‘Eds’ Eramiha as Trevor took a seat at the control booth whilst swings, Anthony Craig and Kira Josephson, along with Olivia Charalambous as Annie, all dressed in stage blacks, are in a state of panic, try to grab Trevor’s attention. Turns out, they have lost a dog named Winston and begin to run around the theatre in search of it.
The pre-show shenanigans do not end there, with parts of the set failing to stay in place. The cast enlist the help of someone from the audience with hilarious results. All of this before the show had even started and I was already laughing my arse off. Surely it couldn’t get any funnier. Oh, how wrong I was!
Whilst The Play That Goes Wrong is essentially about the production going horribly wrong, there is still a theatrical plot to follow. The premise, a classic Agatha Christie whodunnit. A murder has taken place! Charles Haversham (Brodie Masini) is dead! Inspector Carter, portrayed by the fictional Chris Bean (Jonathan Martin) is out to catch the killer. The witnesses and suspects; Fiancé Florence Colleymoore (Stephanie Astrid John), Florence’s brother, Thomas Colleymoore (Joe Kosky), Butler Perkins (Tom Hayward), and Charles’ brother, Cecil Haversham (Sebastiano Pitruzzello).
The whodunnit narrative is clever and has the classic payoff at the end, but it somewhat takes a backseat to the hilarity of everything going wrong!
This cast is equally and hilariously phenomenal. Sebastiano Pitruzzello’s ‘over acting’, combined with his facial expressions, is incredibly funny. Stephanie Astrid John takes a door to the face like a true stunt-hero and is physically hilarious. Olivia Charalambous and Edmund ‘Eds’ Eramiha as the stage crew that become unexpected on-stage-swings are fantastic. Tom Harward as the Butler is the cause of many funny moments at the expense of his fellow cast members. And even though you could see the danger coming, it was just as funny as the first time it happened. Joe Kosky is equally as fantastic as the rest, making for some funny moments as the office quite literally collapses around him.
Each also break the fourth wall, playing into the banter, laughter and applause from the packed Athenaeum Theatre. But there is one moment that had the crowd in hysterics. Jonathan Martin, during act one, had a moment where an audience member shouted out where an object was that he was ‘looking for’. It is unknown if this is planned purposefully to get a response from the crowd, or if it simply was my performance only, but what happened next was completely off the rails! For what felt like ten minutes, Martin’s crowd work is impeccable. Playing into the laughter, stepping out of the fictional Inspector Carter into the Drama Society President of Chris Bean to reel the audience back in. A masterstroke in comedy.
Every single member of this cast, even the two understudies that only appeared at the start of the show, are all comedy geniuses. Not just their delivery of the jokes and portrayal of the fictional bad actors, but their physical comedy is just as good. The rapport with the audience and ability to lean into things that actually do go wrong is impressive. This cast must have the time of their lives every time they hit the stage because the audience sure were! I had an absolute blast and was exhausted from laughing so much by the time it ended.
The Play That Goes Wrong is by far one of, if not the funniest production I have ever seen! It is wall to wall, non-stop laughs from start to finish. And whilst things are ‘going wrong’, technically, they are going very right. The intention is for these events to occur and the technical aspect of this is insane. The timing and trigger points for parts of the set to ‘break’ and ‘fail’ must be extremely difficult to execute, making it even harder to perform compared to a production that ‘goes right’. The full creative team have put together and executed one hell of a show!
Proudly presented by GMG Productions and Stoddart Entertainment Group, The Play That Goes Wrong is performing now at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre until the 28th of September. Additional runs in Port Macquarie 23rd to 25th of October, Canberra 28th of October to 2nd of November, and Perth 7th to 16th of November. This show does regularly sell out! So, make sure you grab your tickets before it is too late!
For more information and ticketing, visit:
https://playgoeswrong.com
https://www.instagram.com/playgoeswrongaunz
Photography by Jordan Munns.
