The Play That Goes Wrong, devised by three acting students who slapped it together at a London pub in 2012, landed with a thud of resounding laughter on the West End in 2014 and has been raising an intercontinental ruckus since. The enterprise transplanted to Broadway in the spring of 2017, becoming New York’s longest running play at the time and merrily convulsing audiences for almost two years. Given the present booking jam, they closed up shop in January, packed the cardboard sets into a station wagon or two (?), and hied over to New World Stages on West 50th Street to continue the fun.
(This policy of downgrading to off-Broadway size at New World Stages is becoming a familiar path for long-running profit-making hits, led by Avenue Q and including Jersey Boys.)
Does The Play That Goes Wrong retain its power—or, at least, its 700 or so laughs—in its new, half-sized house? Yes; at least, mostly. The rickety amateur-theatrical scenery is even more rickety than before; shoehorned onto a considerably smaller stage, Nigel Hook’s Tony Award-winning set is considerably cramped and seems, indeed, to have cardboard elements. This is not a step down, actually; the conceit is that this mystery play is being presented by the Cornley University Drama Society players, and the devalued scenery at New World seems more authentically “amateur theatrical.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★★ review here.]
The cast is new. (There’s another company on tour at present—next week, Tulsa!—which like the Broadway production quickly moved into the black and is turning a tidy profit.) The present troupe is more than satisfactory, including Matt Walker as the smirking juvenile who won’t kiss the girl and Bartley Booz as the butler. Standing out is the especially droll Bianca Horn, who demonstrates a quick comedy sense which reminds this viewer of the young Charlayne Woodard. They have all learned their lines and learned their moves, with Mark Bell’s laugh-generating direction restaged by Matt DiCarlo, who stage-managed the Broadway production and also directed the tour.
So The Play That Goes Wrong still proceeds like a well-oiled clock that doesn’t actually keep time. But it is not quite up to speed. The original Broadway production featured imported actors—including the three authors—who had played the roles hundreds of times in the U.K. before disembarking at the Lyceum. The New World cast has gone through a mere week of previews, with one cancelled due to a manhole fire outside the theater on Saturday afternoon (which at first sounded like one of the play’s fictitious press releases). Which is to say, the actors are not yet accustomed to the timing and the wildfire laughter in the house. This will come, sure; but they are not quite there, yet.
Even so, the comedic fever pitch as The Play That Goes Wrong remains rambunctiously boisterous. A suburbanite across the aisle appeared—from my spot seven seats away—to bust a gut. And she wasn’t the only one.
The Play That Goes Wrong opened February 20, 2019, at New World Stages. Tickets and information: broadwaygoeswrong.com
