FUNNY HOW IT GOES WRONG, BUT IT KEEPS GETTING
WRONGER AND WRONGER AND…
San Francisco Playhouse launches into its 2025-25 season with the fast-paced comedy The Play That Goes Wrong. This play-within-a-play is an old-fashioned Agatha Christie whodunnit murder mystery. The action (or chaos) has already begun when patrons enter the theater. A stage crew is still hammering and frantically finishing a set that resembles a living room in a stately mansion as we peruse a program for the 1920s play, “The Murder at Haversham Mansion,” which is being presented by the amateur theatre company Cornley University Drama Society, a troupe of actors who make The Not Ready for Primetime Players look like professional Shakespearean thespians in comparison.
Premiering in London in 2012 (it had two Broadway runs, and is still playing Off-Broadway), The Play That Goes Wrong — a British farce by Mischief Theatre’s Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields — launches into immediate confusion. As the Society’s director comes on to welcome the audience, the stagehands are still setting up scenery. Ready, set, go: actors are trying to make their entrance in doors that won’t open, thus climbing through windows while delivering their lines. Nothing is in sync. Soon the audience realizes that this is the whole point. It’s all supposed to be nonsensical: hence the title. In the loosely-structured plot a dead body (or is it?) ends up on stage. Jonathan (Adam Griffith, constantly mugging in melodramatic fashion) is discovered murdered by his fiancée Sandra (Erin Rose Solorio) and his brother Robert (Patrick Russell). A detective, Chris (Phil Wong), is called in to investigate. As scenery falls down (the brilliantly imploding community theatre set is by Cody Tellis Rutledge) and actors seemingly miss their cues and entrances, they all try to play along.
The shenanigans on stage are supposed to be funnier than the plot about the murder mystery. As with any campy and over the top murder mystery, affairs and secret identities are revealed with overly dramatic comic effect. The audience is either on board with the unfolding comedy/drama or just follows along hoping it will somehow start to make sense. It never lets up and goes on and on — which makes the humor a bit wearying. Still, most of the opening night audience were whooping it up with clapping, laughing and cat calls.
If slapstick and tumbledown humor is your thing, you’re in luck because you’ll see plenty of it. Otherwise you’ll just have to grin and bear it. A little bit can go a long way. Everything and the kitchen sink is thrown into this and not all of the spaghetti necessarily sticks to the wall. There are definitely clever bits thrown in. I loved one in particular when a stage manager Annie (played to comic perfection by Renee Rogoff) had to fill in at the last second for an actor knocked unconscious.
Tasi Alabastro as the lighting and sound board operator and Greg Ayer as Dennis the butler round out the cast. Director Susi Damilano must have told her crew of actors to give it all they have with every line delivery or gesture. Unfortunately the show doesn’t seem to know when to end and reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit that had some comic moments but just drifted off into chaos (or in this case with scenery falling down).
As I said, many in the audience could not get enough. My companion and I raised our eyebrows and shook our heads throughout the performance as it seemed to go more off the rails. A show like this provides a good litmus test for anyone who is attending with a new relationship or friend. It’s a great way to find out what some people define as being funny. I’ll let you go and judge for yourself.
photos by Jessica Palopoli / San Francisco Playhouse
The Play That Goes Wrong
San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post Street in San Francisco
Tues-Thurs at 7; Fri at 8; Sat at 3 & 8; Sun at 2 & 7
ends on November 9, 2024
for tickets ($15-$100), call 415.677.9596 or visit SF Playhouse
