“The Play That Goes Wrong,” August 8 through 17

Friday, August 8, through Sunday, August 17

Spotlight Theatre, 1800 Seventh Avenue, Moline IL

With The Daily Beast hailing the show as "a two-hour explosion of physical comedy, malapropisms, and knockabout satire," the Tony-winning slapstick farce The Play That Goes Wrong enjoys an August 8 through 17 run at Moline's Spotlight Theatre, this crowd favorite sure to demonstrate why the New York Times deemed the stage smash "one of those breakneck exercises in idiocy that make you laugh 'til you cry."

Written by Jonathan Sayer, Henry Lewis, and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong welcomes patrons to opening night of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s production of an Agatha Christie-like 1920s murder mystery titled The Murder at Haversham Manor. Although the community-theatre folk are (mostly) doing their best, events are quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous. The set, props, lighting, and sound thwart the performers at every turn, and eventually, a few of these largely amateur thespians, demoralized by disaster, go rogue. It’s a stage manager’s worst nightmare ... but an audience’s cue for uproarious laughter. With an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead, and actors who trip over everything (including their lines), the accident-prone participants battle against all odds to make it through to their final curtain in a work lauded by the Los Angeles Times for "the hilarity of a troupe that unfailingly turns can-do into can-don’t."

Helming The Play That Goes Wrong for the Spotlight Theatre is Thomas Alan Taylor, who assistant directed last summer's acclaimed comedy Ripcord, and whose previous directorial credits include St. Ambrose University's [title of show] and Dead Man's Cell Phone and How I Learned to Drive for the QC Theatre Workshop. With the venue's co-owner and artistic director Brent Tubbs heading the show's design team, the comedy's wild scenic deconstruction will be handled by crew members Josh Baez, Amelia Fischer, Maxwell Johnson, Nathan Lundberg, and Emma Regnier.

Five Spotlight Theatre veterans appear among The Play That Goes Wrong's beleaguered show-within-a-show ensemble: Will Crouch (Ripcord); Brant Peitersen (The SpongeBob Musical); Adam Sanders (School of Rock: The Musical); Jessica Taylor (Puffs); and Puffs director and ComedySportz performer Andy Koski. And joining them in the slapstick's eight-person ensemble are three additional talents making their Spotlight debuts: Kady Derbyshire (the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Harvey); Jonathan Grafft (the Black Box Theatre's The Truth); and Thomas McCarthy (the University of Iowa's Side Show).

The Play That Goes Wrong runs in Moline from August 8 through 17, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Admission is $20-25, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)912-7647 and visiting TheSpotlightTheatreQC.com.