I knew I was going to love this show, but it far exceeded even my expectations. I laughed so much, I was coughing and having to clear my throat. My face hurt, my throat hurt. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life at anything, ever. I feel like this show could literally bring about world peace, if we brought everybody in the world together to see it all at once. It is just that funny.
If you’ve never seen The Play That Goes Wrong, and you enjoy theatre, I IMPLORE you to skip the highly detailed part of my recap. This show is genius, but you must go into it blind your first time. You mustn’t know what is coming or it will spoil so much. So please, only read if you’ve already seen this amazing show.
The hilarity started before the show even began. The Playbill has an obviously deliberate printing error, and the show within a show is mentioned on several pages of the Playbill with plenty of hilarity to read before the actors even get on-stage.
Around ten minutes before the show starts, two “theatre workers” are looking around worriedly, asking audience members if they’ve seen a missing dog named Winston. Another worker warned some of the kids in the front row that some lights were likely to fall on them. This breaking of the fourth wall already had me giggling with delight.
It takes quite a while for the actual show to start. An audience member (almost definitely a stooge/plant) gets brought up onstage to help hang a malfunctioning mantlepiece with hilariously comedic results, and then the show “officially” starts!
The director/choreographer/hyper dedicated theater guy comes out with a spotlight illuminating everything but his face. This guy was HILARIOUS as the ultra-serious member of the theatre troupe. After moving to adjust the spotlight, he welcomes us to his production, and mentions several of their past shows that didn’t go well, due to them not having enough actors, or budget. Like, “James and the Peach,” and “Cat”.
The lights go down and come back up before the guy playing the murder victim can get himself in position on the chaise lounge in the middle of the stage. He eventually gets himself laid out and looking somewhat dead, and then hilarity ensues as the other actors keep stepping on his hand, and he did this hilarious bit where he slowly, slowly pulled his hand out of the way of all the stepping feet. This actor was SO good at physical comedy done at a glacial pace.
Once the play starts, the action goes fast and furious. Far too fast to remember every little bit that happens, unless you have a photographic memory, but there were many recurring gags that had me in stitches.
A prop bottle of “scotch” accidentally gets poured out, and is unfortunately substituted with a bottle of paint thinner, which the actors are then forced to drink, resulting in more spit-takes than I could count. We were only two rows back which was close enough to get literally spit on, which delighted me more than it probably should. There’s one scene where the butler keeps saying the wrong line over and over again, getting everyone stuck in a loop where they have to keep drinking more and more paint thinner, and it had Fox in absolute stitches.
The guy playing the dead guy had a recurring gag where he kept bursting through the door with a gun ages before it was actually time for his scene, spoiling the fact that his character isn’t actually dead long before we’re supposed to know. Every time this happened, he would back out of the stage slowly, always ending with crossing his arms over his chest, and closing his eyes, to make himself appear more dead. He had an especially hilarious bit where the stretcher they bring in to remove his dead body completely rips, and they mime taking his body out while still leaving him on the floor, and he wound up gradually inchworming himself off of the stage in an utterly hilarious way.
People keep tossing handfuls of giant confetti behind a window to simulate snow falling, but they always do it terribly with their hands and sometimes faces clearly visible in the window.
The guy playing Perkins the butler keeps looking at obviously written words on his hands to help him with his lines, but he can’t pronounce ANY of them correctly.
Trevor the sound tech guy is hilariously obsessed with Duran Duran, and it’s a running gag throughout the whole show, complete with posters up in his sound booth. At one point another character goes to reveal a prop that’s important to the plot line, but instead he just pulls out a Rio CD. During the show, both Rio and Girls on Film were accidentally played instead of the correct music cues. Duran Duran was my favorite band when I was in high school, so this was a hilariously serendipitous coincidence, that out of all the bands they could have used for a gag, it was them!
Stage manager Annie (one of the theatre workers who’d been looking for the dog along with Trevor) was constantly appearing on stage by accident as she tries to fix all the ridiculous things going wrong on the set like the falling mantle, to the point where she becomes the mantle, with her face showing and clutching two candlesticks in her hands.
Cecil being such a ridiculously self-satisfied actor that he’s constantly smiling at the audience, grandstanding, and gesturing in ridiculous ways to make the audience cheer for him more. When his character died, he got so many cheers when he figured out that he could still have his body carried out on the ripped stretcher by hooking his legs and arms over the sides of the poles. Then he got even MORE cheers after he returned a little while later as the gardener, complete with a dangling leash that was supposed to have Winston at the end of it. He kept having to mime for the missing dog, with barks and all.
The woman playing Florence Colleymoore getting concussed halfway through the play, then suddenly needing to be replaced with Annie the stage manager, who comes out in an ill-fitted wig, with her overalls bursting out through one breast of Florence’s dress was hysterical, along with her stilted attempts at reading her lines from the script which of course got dropped and scrambled multiple times. Only to have the original Florence suddenly come out and the two start fighting over who gets to continue playing the part. They both wind up concussed at one point and Trevor winds up stepping in, much to the delight of the gardener who was much happier to kiss Trevor than he was to kiss either of the women playing Florence.
While Trevor was roped into being Florence, he had to have one of her “episodes” which turned into him breaking out into a full-on dance while singing, “I’m having an episode,” with twerking and everything. Clearly he’s a musical theatre guy, and I wasn’t surprised to learn he’d been in The Wiz and a lot of other productions.
Apart from the recurring gags, there was SO much slapstick and stunt work in this show. All the actors must be absolutely exhausted after every show. There are pratfalls, people lifting heavy things, people trying not to slide off of tipping platforms, people bashing into columns and doors, the physicality everyone has to bring is truly impressive. At one point, a raised platform on the stage tilts SEVERAL degrees downward when a support beam is knocked loose, and the two cast members up on it have to do the craziest maneuvering up there as they try not to fall off, and attempt in vain to get themselves out of their predicament.
The guy who was playing the guy who was playing Charles had the most AMAZING voice. He sounded so much like Brian Blessed, and I was so curious to know whether his actual speaking voice was as sonorous as it was during the whole show. I could have listened to him read the phone book to me. At one point he comes in for a cue and winds up adlibbing something about it being taco Tuesday, and asking the inspector if he wants a taco. After he exits, you can hear him roaring, “I WAS IMPROVISING!”
Honestly, the only joke which I thought felt a bit flat was one where the woman playing Florence is desperately trying to get Cecil to kiss her, while he is DESPERATELY attempting to avoid it. Writers need to learn that consent issues aren’t funny just because a guy is the one trying to be kissed. The scene also dragged on a LOT, and that was part of the humor, but it got a bit uncomfortable for me. It helped some that at the end he wound up giving Florence probably the grossest open-mouthed kiss I’ve ever seen in my life, much to her chagrin. It was a very small blip in an otherwise absolutely fantastic show.
There is way too much for me to get down, especially now that it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen it, but man was that show a laugh riot. I’m really hoping it stays in its little off-Broadway location for a while, because I desperately want to bring my mother to see it, and I’m hoping she can see the exact same cast. Damn Yankees finally announced it’s coming to Broadway in 2027, so I’m hoping I can take her to see both in one trip.
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