{"id":10589,"date":"2024-05-17T20:26:38","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T20:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pashakespeare.org\/?p=10589"},"modified":"2024-05-17T20:27:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T20:27:54","slug":"what-could-go-wrong-pennsylvania-shakespeare-festival-and-philadelphias-1812-productions-team-up-for-the-play-that-goes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pashakespeare.org\/press\/what-could-go-wrong-pennsylvania-shakespeare-festival-and-philadelphias-1812-productions-team-up-for-the-play-that-goes-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT COULD GO WRONG? PSF and Philadelphia\u2019s 1812 Productions Team Up for The Play That Goes Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
By A.D. <\/span>Amorosi<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n In 2012, Great Britain\u2019s Mischief Theatre Company\u2019s playwrighting co-founders Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields created an imaginary world, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society (Cornley U for us Yanks), where so-called classics of Brit-literature became manically messy, accident-prone physical comedy in the hands of their amateurish theater troupe.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0The end result: <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0In May 2023, while Mischief \u2019s goofball iteration of J. M. Barrie\u2019s Peter Pan Goes Wrong opened on Broadway, Philadelphia\u2019s 1812 Productions\u2014the area\u2019s sole theater company dedicated to comedy\u2014conquered the klutzy <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> for sold-out audiences at Plays & Players Theatre with 1812\u2019s boss, director Jen Childs, at its helm.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now 1812\u2019s Producing Artistic Director Childs, her athletic original cast (Anthony Lawton, Scott Greer, Justin Jain, Sean Close, Ian Merrill Peakes, Melanie Cotton, Karen Peakes) and its Fight Coordinator-turnedon-stage \u201cStage Manager\u201d Eli Lynn bring the kinetic mayhem of<\/span> The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> to Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival for the start of its summer season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Philadelphia audiences are used to seeing two of its leads, Anthony Lawton and Scott Greer, mouthing the dramatic words of Pinter, Mamet, Shakespeare, and Ibsen. Yet when it came to <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i>, this pair of Barrymore Award-winning thespians doubly focused, hysterically, on avoiding breaking bones as mastering its highly physical comedy can be as dangerous as it looks on-stage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou have to make yourself safe, while maintaining the look of danger on this set\u2014like I have to wear protective soles on my shoes to be extra grip-py,\u201d said Greer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe rehearsal process for this show, as opposed to dramas or other comedies that I\u2019ve performed, comes down to physical problem solving, to how things work mechanically THEN, how do we make it look as if we\u2019re doing it for the first time,\u201d said Lawton of <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNormally I might be thinking about more interior or emotional things, but here, it\u2019s primarily physical.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There is, of course, wiggle room for improvisation on a nightly basis. During its previews, Lawton\u2014who shares an over 30-year friendship with Greer\u2014and his friend\/fellow 1812- mate had to suddenly wrestle control over certain stage props. \u201cWe had to figure out certain configurations quickly, something funnier looking than anything we had already tried,\u201d stated Lawton.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But make no mistake: what looks unwieldiest about the flailing-about aspects of <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> is as precise as a sniper\u2019s bullet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis show is lots of comedy math, prop math, and problem solving in this really insane way,\u201d said Eli Lynn. \u201cJennifer Childs is great at that. With her, the best idea in the room wins. Everyone considers all the options. Other times, it is a matter of just putting a lot of funny people in a room, and seeing what happens.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A veteran of many of 1812\u2019s works, including its annual faux-news comedy, This Is the Week That Is, Sean Close laughed when he recognized that <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> was different than anything that Jen Childs had ever offered him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe process of doing <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i>, the severity of the challenge of this beast, is unlike anything I have worked on with Jen,\u201d he said. \u201cWe knew that, at its start, that this wasn\u2019t going to feel fun or funny\u2014that we\u2019re going to feel as if we don\u2019t know where we are or why we\u2019ve repeated things so many times\u2014 but addressing the comedy calculus problem and putting all of our clown-brains together was essential.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, how does an actor control the uncontrollable when it comes to<\/span> The Play That Goes Wrong?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u201cWith lots of practice,\u201d said Greer. \u201cJen (Childs) wisely gave us a full week of rehearsal on set, before we started tech, because THE SET is the main character of this play\u2026. And there were several moments where things went quickly out of control, fell from my hands and smashed spectacularly.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On the topic of corralling chaos while relaying the playwrights\u2019 high (hilarious) points, Sean Close claimed that their staged endeavor was a matter of coordination above-all-else. \u201cI\u2019m using the double meaning of that: physical coordination and in relation to tackling the script,\u201d said Close. \u201cThat script was brilliantly engineered and workshopped by Mischief Theatre into this incredible machine where there are several layers of things happening at once. I mean, audiences will see 1812 actors playing other actors in character whose play is likely bad while working toward its goal of maintaining the murder mystery at hand while navigating the roadmap of pratfalls and a set breaking apart. So, there are several layers of \u2018meta\u2019-ness at work in <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong.<\/span><\/i>\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lynn, responsible for choreographing the madness of onstage combat, falls and trips, quickly seconded Close\u2019s emotion by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s having to create the mayhem of an actual live performance layered on top of manufactured mayhem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0As 1812 Productions is Philadelphia\u2019s smart, sole all-comedy theater company, the word is king. What then does it mean, to transpose the spirit of intelligent loquaciousness into hardcore pratfalls and head slams?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLanguage definitely takes a back seat in this play to the arc of its action,\u201d said Lawton. \u201cThere is not a lot of funny language in <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i>, but rather funny ways to say very banal things, while tripping over each other and hopefully not getting hurt too badly.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Close agreed with his co-star Lawton. \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing something with wit and bantering back-and-forth, you\u2019re on the ride more seamlessly,\u201d he said. <\/span>\u201cThe Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> chews you up as an actor, spits you out, then you\u2019re in the wings asking yourself what happened. My fight or flight doing this show is high…very high. Looking like we\u2019re getting hurt without actually getting hurt is our goal. That\u2019s what controlled chaos truly means.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In discussing the living-breathing-coughing-wheezing-wonky set of <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> (from 1812 Scenic Designer Colin McIlvaine), Close poked fun at a tried-and-true theatrical maxim. \u201cYou know how people say that the set is another character? In this play, it is the main character,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd as things break down (editor\u2019s note: quite literally) you\u2019ll see the backstage crew hard at work with us.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Considering the constant surprise and perfect (silly) storm of its last sold-out run at <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i>, Close expects that Pennsylvania Shakespeare Fest audiences will be equally amazed\u2014almost as much as its actors are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEverything is precise-precise-precise with this show, so the fun thing is figuring out how this cast can pull it all off every night,\u201d said Lynn of its planned accidents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much in this show\u2026 it\u2019s so saturated with hijinks, that it has incredible re-watch-ability,\u201d said Close encouraging anyone who witnessed <\/span>The Play That Goes Wrong<\/span><\/i> at Plays & Players to drive up the turnpike to DeSales U<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By A.D. Amorosi In 2012, Great Britain\u2019s Mischief Theatre Company\u2019s playwrighting co-founders Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields created an imaginary world, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society (Cornley U for us Yanks), where so-called classics of Brit-literature became manically messy, accident-prone physical comedy in the hands of their amateurish theater troupe. \u00a0The end result: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n