The Play that Goes Wrong, soon to hit the stage in Hong Kong, is a tour de farce
From a fringe theatre in Islington, to the West End and Broadway, to a Royal Variety performance, this slapstick comedy is going from strength to strength
Just before the second act in The Play that Goes Wrong there’s a scene where the cast of hapless actors and crew are stressing because the stage isn’t ready. Then the curtain closes and a minute later opens again on all the cast in (momentarily) perfect organisation.
Most things that go wrong in this farce of a play within a play are, of course, deliberate. But one evening when the production was on its UK tour the “crew member” whose role was to sit on the chaise longue while everyone else was scurrying around decided, instead of the usual book or mobile phone, it would be funny if he brought on a huge punnet of raspberries and ate them.
“He didn’t even drop them!” remembers one of the show’s three creators, Jonathan Sayer, who plays the actor who plays the butler. “Because he was stuck and panicked – I saw it in his eyes – he decided to throw them thinking he’d get rid of them.”
“I remember Jon’s face and him saying ‘Oh no’ and looking at me as the curtain went up,” says his co-writer Henry Lewis. “We had to do the whole second act with raspberries all over the floor and every new person came on stage saw them and didn’t know why they were there.”
