The Play That Goes Wrong is still a hit comedy-farce at off-Broadway’s New World Stages, at 340 West 50th Street. It opened in London in 2014 and is still running there. A Broadway version played for two years, and this new group in its third year fills the stage with jokes, nonsense and slapstick antics that keep the audience laughing for two hours.
There is also a pre-show that warms up the audience for the comic chaos that is coming around the corner. The three British actors – Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields – concocted this effort and set the play at the fictional Cornley University Drama Society, which is an amateur group of actors, and they will be trying to make their play within a play, “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” a success while trying to overcome their inferior dramatic skills.
This comedy outruns, outpunches and out-pratfalls the old silent film comedies of Hollywood. Steve Martin and Martin Short would be great stars. They try to keep the play’s “Murder” theme in shape, but most of the time, however, the play’s lunacy has full scope. The play is not as sophisticated as Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, 1982’s similar farce, yet The Play That Goes Wrong to me serves a wider audience or as the notes in the program says: “Anyone from a child of 8 to 100 years is welcome.” The Friday night I was there, it was packed with laughter from every age! Including me!
Photo Credit: Jeremy Daniel
