Review: THE (ONE-ACT) PLAY THAT GOES WRONG at Burbage Theatre Company

Burbage Theatre Company (BTC) kicks off its season with the delightfully disastrous “The (One-Act) Play That Goes Wrong,” a howlingly funny play-within-a-play written by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, and Jonathan Sayer.

The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society welcomes the audience to its production of ‘The Murder at Haversham Manor,’ a 1920s-era British whodunit, where the resident patriarch, Charles Haversham (Andrew Iacovelli, as the actor Jonathan, playing Charles), lies dead—or ineffectively tries to appear that way—presumably by murder, as the stage comes to light.

The possible culprits include Florence Collymoore (Allison Crews, as the actress Sandra, playing Florence), Charles’s fiancée; her lover and Charles’s brother, Cecil (Michael Yussef Greene, as the actor Max, playing Cecil); Florence’s brother, Thomas (Jack Clarke, as the actor Robert, playing Thomas); and the butler, Perkins (James Lucey, as the actor Dennis, playing Perkins). There among them to solve the mystery and identify the guilty party is Inspector Carter (Liam Roberts, as the artistic director and actor Chris, playing the Inspector).

From the get-go, even before Chris introduces the show, the set suffers a few mishaps that stagehands Trevor (Hector “Manny” Maldonado) and Annie (Valerie Westgate) fail to repair, which has a veritable snowball effect for the next hour, when the stage door won’t open, props are misplaced or disappear, wall fixtures fall (before those walls collapse), sound and light cues are delayed, and Sandra is knocked unconscious.

When Murphy’s law rears its ugly head upon this motley crew, there is simply no turning back, and the laughs are as continuous as the calamity. Much like Nero who fiddled uninterruptedly while Rome burnt, or the band that played on during the sinking of the Titanic (albeit under much less tragic circumstances), the performers carry on with fierce determination, which makes the already amusing interplay even more hilarious.

Physical comedy is no easy feat, and the delivery and timing from the entire ensemble is impeccable. The farcical script demands exaggerated dialogue, foiled entrances and exits, and repetitious, disorderly conduct. Jeff Church’s masterful direction of this cast is exemplary, leaving the audience thoroughly convinced that something so wrong or bad can, in fact, be this good. My heart goes out to production designer Trevor Elliott, whose stunning set is left in shambles.

While the performances collectively make the show so terribly entertaining, each actor has his or her moment (or more) to shine.  Iacovelli’s long-held expression when Trevor misses his lighting cue is priceless; Clarke has his own hysterical variation of the spit take; Greene triumphs when his character has to answer the phone while his arms are otherwise detained; Roberts breaks the fourth wall to rollicking results; Crews and Westgate bring down the house when Annie gets bitten by the acting bug and tries to upstage Sandra, and Lucey steals the show with his inability to remember—or correctly pronounce—his lines.

BTC’s production of “The (One-Act) Play That Goes Wrong” is criminally amusing and a brilliant showcase of impressive performances--definitely not one to be missed.

“The (One-Act) Play That Goes Wrong” runs through September 22 at Burbage Theatre Company, 59 Blackstone Ave in Pawtucket, RI. For tickets and information, visit https://www.burbagetheatre.org/ or call 401-484-0355.

Photo by Maggie Hall

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