Review: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG at 5-Star Theatricals

Every actor who has ever strode upon a stage has had nightmares of on-stage mishaps: forgotten lines, props that don't operate properly or are not there at all, and other horror stories. You wouldn't be an actor until you experience one of these disasters sometime during your career. Now imagine an entire show consisting of one calamitous, embarrassing accident after another, cascading into a monumental catastrophe, and you've got The Play That Goes Wrong. The slapstick farce got its start in London's West End in 2014 and hasn't stopped bringing down houses (literally) ever since. In 2017 it hit Broadway and has been metastasizing in theaters across the U.S., finally arriving in Thousand Oaks' Scherr Forum Theatre on March 13 for a three-weekend stumble, staged by 5-Star Theatricals.

The show is a play-within-a-play, as the low budget Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society is preparing to stage a murder mystery, The Murder at Haversham Manor but is encountering difficulties getting set pieces arranged on the stage. As soon as patrons enter the theater, they witness members of the "stage crew" grappling with a stubborn mantelpiece that refuses to stay in place. Another stage hand is trying to hang a canvas oil painting on the wall but ends up falling and punching a hole in the canvas with his hand. This is only the overture to the symphony of errors that occurs almost non-stop during the cast's attempt to get through the show. The elaborately booby-trapped set was designed by Cody Rutledge, a third-year graduate student in theater at the University of Connecticut. It's the sixth go-around for the set, which has had to endure nightly disasters yet still be in one piece to go again the next night, and then get transported to the next city. It takes a lot of expertise and knowledge of physics to guarantee the major slip-ups that occur during the show, but if something doesn't go off as planned, you'd never know it, because it would just add to the hilarity.

[caption id="attachment_20486" align="alignright" width="700"] Mark Gagliardi, Travis Joe Dixon, Justin Michael Wilcox and John Shartzer[/caption]

The main takeaway about The Play That Goes Wrong is realizing how many different things can happen during a production, and they all happen here: a misplaced or mishandling of props, mispronouncing words, mis-timed or incorrect sound effects, mistimed entrances, reading stage directions out loud, set pieces falling apart, slips and falls on loose carpeting, costumes that fall apart, facial hair that comes unglued, and so on and so forth. At one point, the play's leading lady gets cold-cocked by a door and has to be surreptitiously dragged off stage where she can recover, but despite the cast's valiant efforts, they fail to realize that NOTHING that occurs on stage is surreptitious, despite their causal attempts to hide them. The hilarity of The Play That Goes Wrong isn't just the choreographed mayhem that occurs, it's the cast members' attempts to retain their dignity and proceed with their lines with no regard for what had just happened. So when as simple a prop as a pencil doesn't turn up where it is supposed to, the actor grabs any object that happens to be nearby, in this case a pot of flowers, and hopes that the audience won't notice the difference. The gaffes are too obvious to ignore and the laughter in the audience runs in waves that never stops, like waves in the ocean. It might have helped a little if the actors knew how to ad-lib, but their attempts at talking their way out of a disaster only make things funnier. Putting a sheet over your head and running off stage doesn't mean no one can see you. These stumblebums make a simple act such as answering a telephone turn into a chaotic game of Twister.

[caption id="attachment_20485" align="alignleft" width="300"] Travis Joe Dixon (Perkins) is assaulted by his fellow actors for not remembering his next line (L-R: Dixon, Mark Gagliardi, Justin Michael Wilcox, and Gabi Manoukian). (photo by Veronica Slavin)[/caption]

Probably the funniest part of this uproarious show comes when the butler Perkins (Travis Joe Dixon) forgets his next line and instead, repeats his line from the top of the page, resulting in the other actors being forced to repeat their lines all the way to the bottom of the page, at which time Perkins still hasn't remembered what he was supposed to say and, frustrated,  says his first line again, starting the whole thing over again, with the play stuck in neutral, not unlike like a game of Monopoly where one keeps getting the "Go Directly to Jail" card. There is simply no way out of it until Perkins can properly say his next line.

The Play That Goes Wrong is exquisitely directed by Larry Raben, who is more than familiar with physical as well as verbal comedy, but this incredibly funny show is a team effort and lighting designer Brandon Baruch, sound designer Jonathan A. Burke, hair and makeup designer Luis Martinez, prop designer Alex Choate, and costume designers Gail Garon and Christine Steele all deserve equal credit for their respective mischief. Don't worry about the plot or the characters. It's all incidental. Just experience the actor's nightmare to end all nightmares and enjoy this marvelous production. The accident-prone cast includes Timothy Willard, Justin Michael Wilcox, Adam Hagenbuch, Mark Gagliardi, Travis Joe Dixon, Lyndsi LaRose, John Shartzer, and Gabi Manoukian. We hope their accident insurance is up to date.

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The Play That Goes Wrong falls apart until March 29 at the Scherr Forum Theatre.