So nonstop hilarious is the latest National Tour playing a visit to the Ahmanson, The Play That Goes Wrong just might hold the laugh-a-minute record for a West End-to-Broadway comedy smash.

Ask any stage actor to recall their worst live-theater mishaps and you’ll likely get at least one of these responses:

–The time they couldn’t find a prop that was supposed to be there and then had to make do with what was at hand.
–The time a cast member went up on their lines and had to cry out for help.
–The time a stuck door wouldn’t unstick.
–The time they were given the wrong cue and ended up either back where they’d already been or farther ahead in the plot than they had any business being.
–The time that illness or injury necessitated a mid-show replacement who had no idea what they were doing.
–The time a prop fell from where it was hanging or standing.
–The time they had to pretend that everything was going right when absolutely everything was going wrong.

Each and every one of these contretemps occurs in The Play That Goes Wrong, and that’s just the tip of the farcical iceberg.

Following its 2015 Laurence Olivier Award win for Best New Comedy, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields’ The Play That Goes Wrong crossed the Atlantic for a 745-performance Broadway run (no big deal fifty years ago but a very big deal these days) before immediately transferring off-Broadway (where it’s still packing them in), and Ahmanson audiences now get to see the very same production with a touring cast who give their West End/Broadway/off-Broadway counterparts more than a run for their funny money.

The Play That Goes Wrong imagines what might transpire if a thoroughly inept bunch of theater-loving amateurs were suddenly given enough money to stage a production as originally written. (Before tonight’s Agatha Christie-esque The Murder at Haversham Manor, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society had has been forced by lack of funding to produce reduced-cast productions of Two Sisters, The Lion And The Wardrobe, and Cat.)

Drama Society stage manager Annie (Angela Grovey) and lighting-and-sound operator Trevor (Brandon J. Ellis) get the side-splitting action going even before The Play That Goes Wrong gets started, then end up recruited to do much more than they bargained for when signing up for backstage duty.

Serving as our host to the evening’s murder mystery is Jack-of-all-trades Chris Bean (Evan Alexander Smith), who’s not only directed, designed, and done PR for the committed (and commitment-worthy) Drama Society, he stars as Inspector Carter, assigned to investigate the mysterious death of Charles Haversham (Yaegel T. Welch as Society member “Jonathan Harris”), the crime’s chief suspects being the victim’s fiancée Florence (Jamie Ann Romero as “Sandra Wilkinson”), his brother Cecil (Ned Noyes as “Max Bennett”), aka Florence’s secret lover, his best friend Thomas (Peyton Crim as “Robert Grove”), and his faithful (or not so faithful) butler Perkins (Scott Cote as “Dennis Tyde”).

Under Matt DiCarlo’s inspired direction (faithful I’m guessing to Mark Bell’s West End/Broadway vision), an absolutely sensational touring cast not only deliver deliciously, deliberately over-over-the-top performances to do the world’s worst community theater proud, they do so while accomplishing back-breaking physical comedy that must be seen to be believed. (If ever a cast deserved combat-pay bonuses, this is that cast.)

Production design elements are all top-notch, chief among them Nigel Hook’s justifiably Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning set, one that delivers the everything-that-could-go-wrong-does-go-wrong goods to heart-stopping effect.

 Perhaps best of all for Ahmanson audiences, this is that rarity among straight plays, one that even those seated high up in the balcony can enjoy almost as much as those in prime orchestra seats. (It’s also that rarity where the backstage crew get to be a deserved part of end-of-show curtain calls.)

Jeff Norman is production stage manager. Assistant stage manager Blair Baker, Jacqueline Jarrold, Sid Solomon, and fight captain Michael Thatcher are understudies.

The ideal antidote for those still recovering from the dramatic wallop of last month’s Indecent, The Play That Goes Wrong ends the Ahmanson’s 2018-2019 season on the year’s most uproarious note. Don’t be surprised if you die laughing.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
July 10, 2019
Photos: Jeremy Daniel

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, Jonathan Sayer, Los Angeles Theater Review