Oh, how badly I wanted to love this one. I've always had an affection for British farce, and Noises Off (from which The Play That Goes Wrong takes obvious inspiration) is one of my favorite plays ever. Unfortunately, this is a shrill evening of gags that have no buildup and thus, no real payoff. The genius of Noises Off (and what makes most farce work in general) is that it starts slow; we are introduced to the "plot" and characters, along with the neuroses of the actors playing them, early on on in a fair bit of exposition. While this means the laughs are not immediate, they are richer later on because groundwork has been done to make the jokes and bits that much funnier. Here, the show is devoid of that setup and things are obviously going poorly before the show proper begins, so the gags have nowhere to build to and are repeated endlessly. Sure, it's funny to see someone get hit in the head with a door, but it's funnier if it doesn't happen right off the bat. It's also increasingly less funny when it happens 20 times over the course of the evening. The jokes in the actual text are not quite as repetitive, but you can see them coming from a mile away.
In a general sense, it's also unclear what the focus of the show really is here. We are never introduced to the real personality of the actors as in Noises Off (though there are hints here and there), so nothing is happening on that secondary level. However, the "play" we're watching is borderline incomprehensible. I understand that the play really isn't the thing here, but if the audience can't understand what is "supposed" to be happening, then the mistakes aren't as clear and don't pack the same comic punch.
The writing is not very inspired, but the direction is certainly to blame here as well. Farce is challenging because, with so much happening as the action builds, everything on stage has to be precise so that the audience can follow from moment to moment. At most points in The Play That Goes Wrong, it just feels like a free-for-all- so much is going on that it feels like confusing chaos. And as just a technical matter, the actors constantly keep talking when the audience laughs at a gag, which makes everything going on even muddier.
The actors here are all certainly working their tails off and deserve credit for being so willing to throw their bodies across the stage, but everyone starts at such a fever pitch that they very quickly become grating. There were, however, a few fun moments from Nancy Zamit and Henry Lewis. The set is more or less what you'd expect, but it's certainly well-constructed.
Much of the audience (at least in the balcony, where the view is incidentally fine) was losing their mind, so I'm clearly in the minority here. But the entire time I wished I were sitting in the Lyceum for a return engagement of Oh, Hello so I could actually be laughing.
I am a firm believer in serendipity- all the random pieces coming together in one wonderful moment, when suddenly you see what their purpose was all along.
