Studio Theatre Perth is really pumped to be able to bring The Play That Goes Wrong to their stage, opening on July 2 for two weekends of matinées and evening performances. Directed by the talented Carolee Mason, it promises to be a wild and wacky ride. For decades, Carolee Mason was an integral part of the Perth and District Collegiate Institute. She started the PDCI Drama Club, which drew almost as many students as the school’s football program. The club ran year-round, touring musicals and dramas for the community and for festivals. Becky Bellamy and Cindy Deachman — the stage management team currently working on this upcoming production with Carolee — were students during those years.
The Play That Goes Wrong, cowritten by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, is a play within a play. The premise is that a small and inept novice drama society is putting on a piece of theatre that they hope will be their first big hit. However, as it unfolds, the play presents a challenging array of unanticipated problems to the inexperienced company and goes into a full-fledged downward spiral. At Studio Theatre the show opens with technicians still on the stage fine-tuning and repairing bits and pieces of set. This is the first inkling for the audience that things may not go completely as planned. Chris Bean, the director of the society (and the Inspector in the play), played by Chris Angel, is determined to make a comeback with the Cornley University Drama Society. He has gathered a motley crew of friends and acquaintances, many of whom have no theatre experience at all, to pull off “The Murder at Haversham Manor”.
Each cast member — Chris Angel, Josh Gallant, Dave Clark, Carl Sherbino, Rob Glas, Brent Maguire, Bob DelGrande, Kristy Tait-Angel, Lara Klymko, Christine Erdos and Josh Reil — has two roles, and each performs with an intense and almost painful drive to make the play go right. Unfortunately, the play goes incredibly wrong. Audiences will be amazed at the talents of the hard-working cast and the deftness of the physical comedy where the characters are fighting to avoid calamity. At times lines are delivered with an ironic twist that indicates the actor is hoping the audience will let this one slide. Throughout the play within the play, the Cornley Society’s actors must be prepared to deal with unplanned stimuli and try to stay on script. They all want the play to succeed, but the cards in this deck are stacked against them. It becomes a losing battle of trying to reconcile the script to the on-stage reality, and to stay in character while a chain reaction of events rattles ominously around every corner and behind every bookcase. What we see on stage is an unravelling of catastrophic proportions.
To help me understand her overall vision for this play, during a delightful interview with Director Mason she proposed that I think Buster Keaton, commedia dell’arte, and restoration comedy as inspiration parallels. Her suggestions led to some fascinating research on my part to get the full picture of where Mason is going with this piece of theatre. It promises to be like nothing you have seen before!
The real star of the play, Mason will tell you, is the set. Appearing in all its luxurious Georgian manor glory, it comes complete with an elevator, a chandelier, stained glass windows, paintings, a mantlepiece, a grandfather clock, a second floor, and a revolving bookcase. “The set is the star, and the actors are the pawns,” explains Mason. The set is designed by Mason, built by Reiner Silberhorn and team, and comes together with generous use of items from the Northumberland Players.
Tickets are available now at Tickets Please (TicketsPlease.ca, 485–6434) and through the box office at studiotheatreperth.com. Show dates are July 2 through to July 12. There will be Saturday and Sunday matinées at 2pm and evening shows at 7:30pm on Thursdays and Fridays. Opening night is $5 off and students 17 and under are always half-price.