Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Joel Schaefer in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Live theatre is a risky business. And there’s a show onstage in town designed expressly, with single-minded high-precision calculation, to mine the comic gold in that.

The Play That Goes Wrong, currently making people laugh en masse and out loud at the Citadel, is proof incontrovertible that we have a fatal attraction to chaos. And we love the scramble to cover it up and carry bravely on, against the odds. Which says something about us, and our world, but that’s another story for another day. 

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Anyhow, the disaster potential is high, moment to moment, in this the break-out hit (still in New York and London) from the agile minds of the Brit comedy company Mischief Theatre, the trio of mischief-makers who brought us Peter Pan Goes Wrong in 2022. Here, the game amateur thespians of the Cornley Drama Society are undertaking their biggest, most impressively elaborate, production yet, as the director (Daniela Vlaskalic) tells us at the outset, in her plummy noblesse-oblige theatre director voice. Oh-oh.

After the budgetary set-backs that led to such scaled-down Cornley productions as The Two Sisters, The Lion and the Wardrobe, and Four-And-A-Half (“based on some of the wives of Henry VIII”), The Murder at Haversham, she assures us, is full bore.

Vanessa Leticia Jetté and Honey Pham in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

Tackling a hoary old chestnut, as the Cornley Drama Society does here, doesn’t really have the comedy potential of Peter Pan Goes Wrong, to be honest. Valiant attempts by earnest amateur artistes to stage, and capture the wonder of, J.M. Barrie’s evergreen airborne fantasy adventure are just more sublime in the end than essaying the overwhelming technical requirements of a genre that’s pretty creaky to begin with, already frequently overacted by theatrical satirists. That Dennis Garnhum’s production has such a comically inventive and physically dexterous cast, and a playground of extreme complexity, counts for a lot.

John Ullyatt, Alexander Ariate, Joel Schaefer in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

An old-school 20s-style whodunnit of the Christie persuasion, The Play That Goes Wrong is set in a remote country manor house, with an eclectic selection of costumes, a dizzying arsenal of props — and ah yes, weapons. Swords are not out of the question at Haversham Manor, just sayin’. The dramatic personae includes assorted members of the rich, landed gentry, their servants, a dog, the village police inspector — the tweedy and the tuxedo-ed.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith, Daniela Vlaskalic and Joel Schaefer in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

The premise dangles before us the question: what could possibly go wrong? Beyata Hackborn’s atmospherically cluttered two-level faux gothic set, where the murderous events unfold — the drawing room, the library, the study, views of the garden — offers an alluring array of possibilities. And, the real star of the show, it will take an extraordinary beating in the course of a couple of hours in the hands of the Cornley company.

Vanessa Leticia Jetté and Daniela Vlaskalic in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

By intermission that set is virtually dismantled. In Act II, as rebuilt in the interval, it gets dismantled again, and by the end it’s in tatters. Props — keys, notebooks, ledgers, incriminating notes, a stretcher, whole bottles of booze, a dog named Winston — will go missing or get mislaid. And so will crucial members of the Cornley cast, felled by collisions with each other and the set. Doors will stick, then fall over when pounded. Even the clock refuses to ring true. Wherever there’s an elevator and chandeliers, be very afraid.

Joel Schaefer, Daniela Vlaskalic, John Ullyatt in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Cues will be mis-timed, the script will go AWOL, lights will flicker out of sync (lighting by Kimberly Purtell), so will the backstage onstage sound system (David Pierce)…. As we arrive in the theatre the likeable Cornley cast members are mingling with the audience, testing out their English accents. The Cornley costumes (by Joseph Abetria) are a riot of clichés and near-misses: deer stalker hats, a velvet smoking jacket, a Flapper dress, a hideous brown cardigan, and as sported by Vlaskalic as the director, the beehive wig and stilettos of a blonde bombshell from a different period and a previous production (possibly Noises Off or One Man Two Guvnors).

Even before showtime the crew is scrambling, hollering, unplugging the wrong cords, shoring up the mantelpiece, requesting assistance with the snow machine…. Yes, things are already starting to go wrong, and things going wrong in live theatre pretty much nails The Domino Effect.

It takes impressive technical skill and formidable timing to bring The Play That Goes Wrong to its knees (and lower), and reduce a murder mystery to a high-speed farce gone off the rails. And Garnhum’s production (a partnership with Theatre Calgary and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre) has that. It also takes an expert cast to act badly well (with comic timing to match the disintegration of the set). And it has that too.

This is an ensemble of first-rate comic actors hamming it up as go-for-the-gusto amateurs with an awful script. And they must work together, not least to avoid unscripted stage fatalities (Morgan Yamada directs one of the silliest stage fights of the season). Together, under Garnhum’s direction, they redefine, in assorted and amusing ways, what being taken aback literally means, as they scramble to restore plausibility, disaster after disaster.

Vanessa Leticia Jetté and Daniela Vlaskalic in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

The brother of the deceased (played by the delightful Andrew MacDonald-Smith) discovers a certain rapport with the audience when things go wrong; his riffs as he discovers just how addictive audience applause can be are very funny. The suave butler (John Ullyatt), attempting aplomb and rattled by his own hysterical deficiencies in pronunciation, is highly amusing. The exasperated corpse (Alexander Ariate), his only somewhat grief-stricken fiancée (Vanessa Leticia Jetté), his hale and hearty childhood friend (Joel Schaefer), along with stage managers (Honey Pham and Ray Strachan, among others) pressed into onstage service … you will get a kick out of them. Ditto the selection of death scenes, and one remarkably acrobatic sequence involving a telephone receiver.

What makes it all a little relentless is that the play under assault by the game but hapless amateur artistes of the Cornley Drama Society is by no means a substantial target to begin with. So there’s a fair amount of repetition involved. Still, you’ll have fun as you survey the wreckage. And you’ll feel for them, too, these struggling stagestruck amateurs. They try so hard to please. And you’ll realize something about the crazy, brave improbability of live theatre too.

REVIEW

The Play That Goes Wrong

Theatre: Citadel Theatre, in partnership with Theatre Calgary and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre

Created by: Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, Jonathan Sayer

Directed by: Dennis Garnhum

Starring: Alexander Ariate, Vanessa Leticia Jetté, Andrew MacDonald-Smith, Joel Schaefer, Daniela Vlaskalic, John Ullyatt, Emily Meadows, Ray Strachan, Honey Pham, Bernardo Pacheko

Running: through Aug. 4

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com