Throughout all the falling set pieces, slipping actors, broken props, and chaos onstage at the Lyceum Theatre, it is clear that something right has been happening at The Play That Goes Wrong. By the time the show concludes its Broadway run, it will have played 750 performances, making it the longest running play currently on Broadway.
Co-written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong introduces The Cornley University Drama Society, which is attempting to put on a 1920s murder mystery, but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong does as the accident-prone thespians battle on against all odds to get to their final curtain call.
But despite all the effort it takes to make the hilarious hijinks come to life every performance, the cast couldn’t be happier. “I think it is so important right now for people to go the theatre and forget about what is happening outside of the building,” Preston Truman Boyd explains. “And this is the perfect show for that. You can totally feel like a kid and laugh.”
Jason Bowen continues, “The fact that, after two hours in the theater, people leave feeling better than they did when they walked in makes coming to work really easy. We really affect people’s spirits. It’s a privilege to be part of the reason that’s happening.”
Flip below to get a backstage view of the cast:
Photos: Backstage with The Play That Goes Wrong
The Mark Bell-directed Broadway production, produced by J. J. Abrams and Kevin McCollum, opened at the Lyceum Theatre in April 2017, going on to win a Tony Award for set designer Nigel Hook. Though the play initially announced an August 26 closing notice, it later pushed its final date to January 6, 2019, but it’s not going very far. The comedy will move to Off-Broadway’s New World Stages, beginning performances at the underground, midtown venue February 11.
