THEATRE
Written by Henry
Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, Mischief Theatre Company
Produced by Lunchbox Theatre Productions, Kenny Wax
Ltd, Stage Presence, David Atkins Enterprises and ABA
Comedy
Theatre, until March 27, 2017
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:****
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Monday Feb 27, 2016 & later in print. KH
L-R Nick Simpson-Deeks, George Kemp, Luke Joslin, James Marlowe
(Couch) Darcy Browne, Brooke Satchwell
An old
theatre adage advises actors to ‘remember your lines and don’t fall over the
furniture’, but it forgets to warn that the furniture might fall on you.
In this raucously
slapstick, UK comedy, The Play That Goes Wrong, anything that can go wrong does
go wrong (Murphy’s Law), including a collapsing set, missed cues, forgotten
lines, missing props and truly awful, hammy acting.
In the play-within-the-play, the pitifully
under-staffed and painfully untalented amateur theatre company, Cornley Polytechnic
Drama Society, stages The
Murder at Haversham Manor, a 1920s murder mystery in the style
of The Mousetrap, the madly
successful, long-running West End play by Agatha Christie.
The play-outside-the-play
is often achingly funny, chaotic and silly and Mark Bell’s direction draws on
the essential dynamics of physical comedy that hark back to Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton and the techniques of the Le Coq clown school in Paris.
The story
is incidental to the sheer idiocy and chaos of the incompetent, am-dram actors,
but suffice to say that there’s a dead body in the drawing room, a bunch of
upper-class twits, their servants and a police inspector (Nick Simpson-Deeks), who
take two hours to figure out who did or didn’t kill the murder victim.
The star
of the production is Nigel Hook’s set design that seems possessed of an evil
theatre spirit that gives the set a demonic life of its own even before the
play-within-the-play begins.
Simpson-Deeks
captures the escalating desperation of Chris Bean, the ambitious but beleaguered
director / producer (and everything else) of the murder mystery who struggles
to keep his production on track while he is also on stage playing the pernickety
Inspector Carter.
The
‘actors’ stand and deliver their rote-learned lines directly to the audience,
rarely looking at each other or communicating, and relentlessly persevering despite
a list of disasters that includes cast members being knocked unconscious –
repeatedly.
Luke
Joslin is suitably pompous as Robert, the actor who, in turn, plays the
snobbish Thomas Collymore, and Joslin’s comic business as he attempts to answer
a phone while sliding down a collapsing platform is a show highlight.
James
Marlow is a riot as the applause-seeking Max who plays Cecil Haversham with
histrionic mincing, prancing, outrageous over-acting and pandering to the
audience.
One wild scene is the
mounting violence of the slapstick fight between Annie, the self-effacing Stage
Manager (Tammy Weller), and the egotistical Sandra (Brooke Satchwell), who
plays Florence Collymore with absurdly flamboyant, balletic gestures.
Adam Dunn provides plenty of laughs as Trevor,
the incompetent technician who can’t get a lighting or sound cue right and is
more interested in texting his pals or finding out who nicked his Duran Duran
CDs.
Darcy
Brown provides plenty of sight gags as the putative dead body that must take up
his bed and walk off stage, while George Kemp is nerdy and supremely stupid as Dennis
who plays Perkins, the butler.
The Play
That Goes Wrong is the latest in the line of British farces about am-dram that
includes The Real Inspector Hound (Tom Stoppard) and Noises Off (Michael
Frayn).
The broad
farce and physical comedy of this show may leave you with a sore jaw from
laughing out loud – unless your tastes in comedy are more cerebral and subtle.
Oh, and
this reviewer strongly denies accepting – or, at least, spending – the $5
‘bribe’ that the ‘director’ unobtrusively slipped into her hand before the
show. No, really! It had ‘BRIBE’ scrawled on it in texta, anyway!
By
Kate Herbert
Director- Mark Bell
Australian
cast director -Sean Turner
Set - Nigel
Hook
Costume
-Roberto Surace
Lighting
-Ric Mountjoy
Cast
Adam Dunn Tech Trevor
Nick
Simpson-Deeks Chris director inspector
Darcy
Brown – Jonathan Charles Haversham dead
Robert -Luke
Joslin Thomas Collymore (brother)
George
Kemp - Dennis Perkins butler
Brooke Satchwell - Sandra
– Florence Collymore
James Marlow – Max –
Cecil Haversham and Arthur
Tammy Weller – Annie –
Stage manager
Francine Cain - Maggie understudy
Jordan Prosser –William
understudy
Matthew Whitty - Lincoln
understudy