Okay, I wasn’t prepared for the complete gut-busting insanity of The Play That Goes Wrong at Virginia Repertory Theatre’s November Theatre. Before heading to the Iron Blossom Festival this past Sunday, I caught a matinee. I didn’t know much about this play other than it was a comedy and that it was known for a good bit of physical humor.
The first thing I noticed was the incredible diversity of the audience. Families, kids, teenagers in groups, couples old and young. They must have known something I didn’t, or maybe, like me, they were just willing to be surprised. VA Rep has a great batting average for excellence. They’re a safe bet for something fun, moving, or, in this case, completely unhinged.
Completely unhinged is exactly what this play is. The premise is simple. An incompetent theatre troupe stages a fictional Agatha Christie-ish murder mystery play, The Murder at Haversham Manor. They do so with all the sincerity such a “thespianic” endeavour requires.
In every conceivable, and many inconceivable, ways, the players trip over themselves, each other, the set, endure lighting mishaps, ill-timed sound cues, and so much more. The show must “go on” despite how many times it goes wrong. This is less a comedy of errors as it is a riot of hilarious disasters. Before you think this sounds exhausting, let me disabuse you. The script by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, and Jonathan Sayer is pure vaudevillian gold. It’s a throwback to a time when an audience was expected to juggle several jokes at a time and laugh at every one of them.
I’ve rarely seen an entire room laugh so hard, so long, and so many times. I could see the moments in the actors’ faces when they had to decide to pause and let a sustained peal of laughter subside a little bit before delivering an even funnier second punchline. You can see the devil behind their eyes when they know they’ve got you wrapped around their finger.
Paul Takacs directs the perfect cast of comedic talent to pull this off. The play begins before you know it’s started and ends with your sides split and knees thoroughly slapped red.
Keith Richards (who looks surprisingly young since he left the Rolling Stones for Richmond theatre) channels Rhys Darby as the “Director” of the play within the play, as well as its inevitable Detective character. Sympathy for the beleaguered comes to mind when witnessing his plight in the course of the performance. It is spot on.
Matt Mitchell does “deer caught in the headlights” a little too well. He was my centerline character I was primarily experiencing the story through. That’s the fun thing, though. You can latch on to any of the performances in this play, and you’d be right for doing so.
Joel White delivers the actor that is far too aware of being onstage to maintain character, and Matt Shofner’s Perkins character serves Tim Blake Nelson energy I was engrossed in. Lindsey Zelli and Amanda Spellman have a whole subplot that rages from center stage to the wings like Peter Griffin fighting a chicken, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Michael Blackwood spends most of the play as a corpse and still manages to get the biggest laughs. Sam Sanders is the blithering imbecile of a stage manager keeping the show completely off its rails.
They kill it dead. All of them. The cast’s comic timing, their perfectly executed pratfalls, the fight choreography (there’s a ton of it), all of these things together made for one of the most enjoyable afternoons I’ve spent in a theatre without crying (sad tears, anyway, because I totally cried some happy ones).
This show is pure, unadulterated fun. It has no message to deconstruct. It will not make you hug anyone or make you call your mom from the car after the show. What it will do is make you want to go again and bring friends. It is appropriate for any audience. This is “laugh as loud as you like” territory.
I have to give biiiig props to the set designers, carpenters, art direction, and the stage management of the tech elements in this performance. I don’t want to spoil anything, but you’ll remember I said this when you watch this whole stage get turned upside down.
This play will not save your soul, but if you don’t love it, I’d suggest checking if you have one.
Main photo by Aaron Sutten
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