From a London pub to international popularity
The play that goes wrong is, as the name suggests, a play about a play in which not a single moment goes according to plan. In the performance, an amateur theatre troupe tries to survive the premiere of a murder mystery, but nothing seems to work out. The lines are forgotten, the sets fall apart and the sound effects come in the wrong places.
The comedy of the play is based on funny, physical situations that the actors find themselves in. The characters have to quickly figure out how to act when, for example, the elevator gets stuck or the door won’t open, as if improvising. The problems faced by the characters are usually very concrete.
“This is a collaboration between acting and scenography. The most important thing in the performance is skilled comedians and skilfully thought out set design,” says Henna Piirto , the play’s lead dramaturg.
The Play That Goes Wrong was originally written as a theatre school graduation project in 2012. Three London theatre students, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields , wrote the farce for a month at the trio’s student residence.
After that, the play began to be performed in a small pub in North London. At first, the audience was only a name, but word of a new, hilarious farce began to spread. Soon the pub was packed every night of performances.
With its popularity, the play went on a tour of the United Kingdom, followed by London’s West End and Broadway. Eventually, the play became an international hit with two million viewers around the world. The play has won several awards in the theatre industry, including Olivier for Best New Comedy (2015) and Tony Award for Best Set Design (2017).
“Comedy is a terribly difficult genre. Hits cannot be created consciously, but they are born when all the necessary elements are in place. There is no effort or over-effort in this play, but it is genuinely funny,” Piirto says.
The Mischief Theatre, founded by the trio of creators, has created a brand from the “goes wrong” template, which they have also used in several other plays, such as Peter Pan’s Goes Wrong and Magic Goes Wrong. In addition, the mini-TV series The Goes Wrong Show has been shown on BBC One.
According to Piirto, the “theatre within theatre” structure provides an opportunity to play with the levels of reality. It’s easier for us to laugh at the mistakes of a fictional group of actors when we know that it’s not really the case.
In the Helsinki City Theatre’s version, the suspense play is performed by the Pirkanmaa Polytechnic Society. The characters in the play are familiar from detective stories set in British manor houses. For example, a detective solving a murder mystery finds out who inherits the murdered person’s money or who is in a love affair with whom.
One level of humour is brought by the fact that the boisterous Finnish actors play British aristocrats and police inspectors, and in Finnish. At no point can the audience forget the setting of the play.
“The characters are not familiar from our everyday reality, so we are constantly aware that the performance is a theatrical play. In that sense, the text provides a framework for harmless comedy,” Piirto says.
The British trio’s play also airs out the farce’s traditions related to gender and social class. The tension is not built on the class difference between the characters, and there are no female roles typical of old farces.
“For example, the half-dressed secretary with whom the protagonist has a secret affair is one of these super clichés that abound in farces, but in NJMP there are no such submissive, sexist female roles,” Piirto says.
“The play renews the spirit of farce in that it is not cynical in its worldview, but benevolent, warm-hearted.”
Ida Henritius