Will Crouch, Kady Derbyshire, Adam Sanders, Thomas McCarthy, Andy Koski, and Jonathan Grafft in The Play That Goes Wrong
[Editor's note: We didn't accidentally screw up the names in Mischa and Kitty's byline. This is their first theatre review since they became Mr. and Mrs. on July 26! Congratulations!]
The Play That Goes Wrong, now being staged at Moline's Spotlight Theatre under the direction of Thomas Alan Taylor, presents a perennially broke theatrical society staging a fictional murder-mystery script: The Murder at Haversham Manor. The show's director Chris (Will Crouch), who has cast himself as the mystery's protagonist Inspector Carter, introduces this play-within-a-play, the plot of which focuses on the death of Charles Haversham (Jonathan Grafft). Carter leads the investigation, and the others in the manor fall under suspicion: Charles’ fiancée Florence Colleymoore (Kady Derbyshire); Charles’ brother Cecil (Thomas McCarthy); Florence’s brother Thomas (Adam Sanders); and the butler Perkins (Andrew Koski). But the plot of this whodunit is really only an excuse for the main attraction, which is the seemingly unending succession of things going wrong – from a missing shelf to a mangled word, from actors getting knocked unconscious to entire pieces of the set falling apart – in ways that keep the audience endlessly entertained. The Play That Goes Wrong authors are Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, and we attended the show's performance on August 9.
Kitty: I once saw an incredibly low-budget production of The Phantom of the Opera (not locally). The cast was composed of amateur actors who were working within some pretty obvious financial constraints. Phantom is famously a very elaborate musical with a lot of visual spectacle. So certain things – such as the Phantom’s mask continually sliding off his face and the chandelier being the size of a bathroom light fixture – kind of made the production unravel. But do I regret going? No way. It was hilarious.
Mischa: Whether the events are hilarious or merely cringe-inducing, theatre audiences and participants have all surely witnessed (or had nightmares about) moments in which things just go wrong in live performance.
K: Dolly Parton famously said, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” Likewise, it takes many hours of rehearsal to make a show look humorously under-rehearsed. I was very impressed by this cast’s precise comedic timing and their ability to make the show funny without it becoming messy. Shows that rely heavily on the trope of mishap and disaster – Noises Off, for example – often devolve into pure chaos by the second half, and all sense of character or plot is completely overtaken by havoc. Taylor’s production was much more balanced. It was nuanced catastrophe.
M: Yes, I totally agree. Just like when the shtick is that people are bad actors (for example, the mechanicals in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream), there can be the temptation to just “be a bad actor” and think you’re delivering the goods. But ironically, it’s necessary to play a bad actor well.
K: McCarthy was a great example of that.
M: Oh yeah – it took me a little while to warm up to it, but before long, I really loved what he was doing.
K: He completely won over the audience. In character as Max, who was cast as Cecil, he would break the fourth wall and mug for the crowd, going all in as this oblivious attention-mongering actor. It got to the point that the audience would cheer for him when he entered.
M: And when McCarthy ended up playing a different character in Act II, Max continued to show through the choices made for the new character. It was great. Even better, I thought, was Jessica Taylor’s Annie, the stage manager who has to sub in for Derbyshire's performer Sandra. At first, she’s reading from the script in a wooden way. But by her next appearance, she’s wearing pieces of Sandra’s costume and acting more confidently. And by the end, she’s fully committed – really, over-committed – to the part, and this transformation drives some of the second act's most riotously funny action.
K: Jessica Taylor and Derbyshire had some of my favorite interactions during that act. On that note, this show is incredibly physical. There’s a lot of running, falling, kicking, screaming, punching, and everything in between. There’s no fight or movement choreographer credited in the program, but we learned that Thomas Taylor and producer Brent Tubbs did most of the choreography with assistance from the cast. The physical gags were all excellent. But of course, they were made even funnier by the set.
M: Dana Lisenbee designed a set that went wrong in all the right ways! Thankfully, only one location needed to be depicted, but many elaborate effects required that the set malfunction perfectly on cue, and it did. Most impressive was the platform representing a second-floor study, which went through terrifying yet comical transformations in the increasingly off-the-rails second act.
K: As the set literally (and deliberately) fell apart around the actors, I actually started to get nervous. I mean, they definitely give you a heads-up that the play is going to go wrong, but I kept thinking, “How far can this go before they don’t even have a stage?!”
M: Things fell apart – but the center held! Let me shout out a few more moments I appreciated. Koski’s consultation of his hand for “forgotten” words … wrongly-pronounced, naturally … .
K: And those words were actually written on his hand. He committed to the bit!
M: Grafft’s antics as the body that won’t stay dead. And Emma Regnier and Amelia Fischer, part of the backstage crew, wandering around at intermission in search of the play’s missing dog.
K: Brant Peiterson as Trevor, Haversham Manor's lighting/sound operator, also had some great moments. He was reacting from the “sound booth” for most of the show, and then, inevitably, had to be summoned onstage to help combat the calamity unfolding.
M: My one gripe is that the mics and acoustics tended to muffle the actors’ diction and cover it with reverb, making it hard to understand people’s words at times.
K: That didn’t lessen my enjoyment, though. Nor did the Saturday heat. This show is a great night out for the whole family.
The Play That Goes Wrong runs at the Spotlight Theatre (1800 Seventh Avenue, Moline IL) through August 17, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)912-7647 and visiting TheSpotlightTheatreQC.com.
