Why ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ is a triumph of method over comedic madness

The magic of live theater lies in its constant reinvention—the thrill of knowing no two stagings are ever identical. Take London’s Menier Chocolate Factory and Southwark Playhouse Borough, which recently gave Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” and “The Frogs,” both featuring Filipino West End star Joaquin Pedro Valdes, striking tonal and thematic overhauls.

Decades earlier, the New Voice Company also pulled off a similar feat, distilling Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sprawling “Aspects of Love” into a taut, intimate chamber piece whose look and feel director-star Monique Wilson continually reshaped across its runs in Manila and Singapore.

Enter GMG Productions’ technically faultless and precisely choreographed “The Play That Goes Wrong.” Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields’ madcap comedy has finally landed on Manila’s bustling theater scene, running through Nov. 22 at The Theatre at Solaire.

When we first saw this laugh-out-loud farce at London’s 100-seat Trafalgar Studios years ago, the two-hour play-within-a-play was a lean, hourlong curtain-raiser—with neither its iconic mezzanine sequence nor a 20-minute interval. Yet even in its formative “Noises Off”-channeling version, complete with interactive preshow antics over a missing dog named Winston, the cast’s frenetic brilliance and catchy, exhilarating energy were already bursting at the seams.

Bringing together performers from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines (represented by Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante), “The Play That Goes Wrong” tracks the disastrous opening night of “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” a 1920s murder mystery mounted by the Cornley Drama Society.

Steering the ship for the amateur theater troupe are director and lead star Chris Bean (Tom Babbage) and his fellow players—namely Robert Grove (Owen Jenkins), Max Bennett (Sebastiano Pitruzzello), Jonathan Harris (Liam Horrigan), Dennis Tyde (Tom Hayward) and Sandra Wilkinson (Bradshaw-Volante)—alongside stage manager Annie Twilloil (Olivia Charalambous) and technical director Trevor Watson (Jake Curran). Adding to the hubris, Bean doubles as the show’s designer, dramaturg, publicity head, dialect coach, fight choreographer and intimacy coordinator. Can anybody be more multihyphenate than that?

Set amid a howling snowstorm, “The Murder at Haversham Manor” stars Bean as Inspector Carter, called in to solve the inexplicable murder of wealthy Charles Haversham on the night of his engagement party. The plot thickens fast: Charles’ fiancée, Florence Colleymoore (Bradshaw-Volante), is secretly involved with his brother Cecil, while Florence’s fiercely protective brother, Thomas, hides deep, dark secrets of his own. Chaos ensues when everyone discovers that Charles had just rewritten his will—leaving his entire fortune to his butler, Perkins.

So, who killed Charles and why? The answer lies in a tantalizing setup that might have turned Agatha Christie green with envy—were it not entrusted to a chronically inept theater troupe that simply cannot get its act together.

Once this hopeless, hapless ensemble takes the stage, lines vanish, sound cues misfire, words get mangled, and doors jam shut. Worse still, a plot-critical ledger disappears, a decanter is filled with paint thinner instead of apple juice, and a pesky corpse stubbornly refuses to stay dead.

When a stray door knocks Sandra unconscious, the unrehearsed stage manager—and later the sound operator—must scramble to take her place. Even funnier is the ensuing territorial battle once Sandra regains consciousness and flatly refuses to surrender the spotlight to a sassy “understudy” who has grown far too fond of her 15 minutes of instant fame. We would have gladly stepped in to break up the bloody brawl had we not been laughing too hard to move. What a hoot!

Elsewhere, Dennis blanks on his lines and accidentally traps the cast in an inescapable dialogue loop. Even as the mezzanine gradually collapses beneath them, the actors valiantly refuse to break character, gamely delivering their cues while clinging to the slanted floor for dear life!

So inept and underfunded is the Cornley Drama Society that it has been forced to whittle its upcoming season—“Two Sisters,” “The Lion and the Wardrobe,” and “Cat”—dramatically down to size. Its off-kilter humor is so deliriously unhinged that one can easily imagine Red Concepcion, Topper Fabregas, or Missy Maramara in full-on SPIT mode jumping right into any of the roles, male or female.

Beyond the onstage mayhem, theatergoers would be wise to snag a copy of the drolly curated souvenir program, which had us cackling from cover to cover. Among its mock announcements is an upcoming production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” reimagined with one remote tree and no actors! (“Performance ends at your discretion. Please bring your own seating,” the blurb advises.)

Equally endearing are the production’s fourth-wall-breaking attempts to weave Filipino pop culture into the banter—gleefully invoking “It’s Showtime” and its indelible jingle one moment, and breaking into a brisk “Thank you, thank you, ang babait ninyo” the next. The local Easter eggs land with varying degrees of success, natch, though the playful audacity remains a stroke of comedic genius.

Under Hannah Sharkey’s brisk direction, the cast delivers wildly exuberant turns, each player executing his or her “thespic deliverables” with tongue firmly in cheek. Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante earns special commendation for integrating so seamlessly into Mischief’s well-oiled, laugh-a-minute juggernaut. Even skeptics of physical comedy cannot help but respect the high-wire degree of difficulty the company clears to maintain such punishing comedic stamina and razor-sharp timing. Credit goes to GMG Productions for bringing this logistically intricate production to Manila.

This comedy of errors—a nonstop cavalcade of unfortunate incidents and winking misfires—was relished by last Saturday’s gala crowd, which looked like a veritable who’s who of Philippine theater. The local community turned out in full force to share in the celebratory mood. 

Just within eye-shot of our seats were stalwarts from Trumpets, Repertory Philippines, Full House and 9 Works Theatrical, plus Culturtain Musicat Productions’ Girlie Rodis, Tanghalang Pilipino’s Dennis Marasigan, “Porvenir” actress Madeleine Nicolas, and our own seatmate, Red Turnip’s Rem Zamora (whom we hadn’t seen since we did “The Male Voice” together in 2010). 

Even in an industry that prides itself on error-free surgical precision and relentless rehearsals, every stage veteran knows that live theater’s best-laid plans are always one missed cue away from disaster. But, as they say, “The show must go on.”