Review: Näytelmä joka menee pieleen

In 2012, three friends: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, wrote The Play That Goes Wrong as their graduation project at the theatre school. After a small-scale start, this hilarious play gained fame and eventually moved to the stages of London’s West End and Broadway. Now this Play That Goes Wrong cheers up Finnish viewers on the Arena stage of the Helsinki City Theatre.

The play tells the story of an unfortunate performance by a theatre group, where everything really goes wrong. In the Helsinki version, the play Murder in Haversham Manor is performed by the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Polytechnic Drama Society. The members of an amateur club may not be so much skilled as enthusiastic. Pentti Kotkaniemi has been responsible for the direction.

So I saw the performance “in the play”. On the other hand, I admired the skills of the actors at the City Theatre. In addition to the actors familiar from comedies and farces (Eija Vilpas as stage manager Anne, Eppu Salminen as light and sound man Teuvo, Santeri Kinnunen as the play’s director Risto and police inspector Carter, and Risto Kaskilahti as Jonde aka Charles Haversham), Joel Hirvonen is absolutely hilarious as Masa begging for applause and gardener Arthur.

To the auditorium, the passion and enthusiasm of the actors was conveyed when, after a long break, they were able to perform to a full audience. We, the spectators, sense the sense of danger, which increased towards the end of the play. The audience lived to the pace of the performance, and clearly we enjoyed the performance.

A couple of hours of laughter therapy was good.