INTERVIEW: Bartley Booz’s career has gone right by going ‘Wrong’
Photo: The Play That Goes Wrong stars Bianca Horn and Bartley Booz. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
The Play That Goes Wrong, the hilarious comedy that started in London, transferred to Broadway and lives on at off-Broadway’s New World Stages, has been missing cues, forgetting lines and destroying mantelpieces for years. Audiences — both newbies and repeat customers — continue to flock to the mayhem of a local theater troupe staging the Agatha-Christie-like mystery, The Murder at Haversham Manor. They flock to the production less to see who did it and more to see how wrong these actors can be in the telling of the tale.
At the center of the off-Broadway production is Bartley Booz, making his off-Broadway debut in the role of Dennis, the butler who often forgets his lines. The actor, who has acted in regional productions of For Annie, Park Plays and Little League, came to the comedy through the old audition process.
“I auditioned back in January,” Booz said in a recent phone interview. “I felt like it moved very, very quick, and then we were popping into rehearsals maybe a week after I was cast. They shifted the set over from the Lyceum Theatre to New World Stages, so we had the luxury of working on the set. They really condensed the rehearsal process considering we had everything. It only took us two-and-a-half weeks to get the thing running in front of audiences.”
Booz actually did not take in a performance of the play while it ran on Broadway. This, in his mind, was actually a good thing because he wanted his portrayal of Dennis to be original and without influence from the other actors who have played the part.
“I kind of thought that was a good thing for me,” he said. “I didn’t have any preconceptions of how the role was supposed to be done, and Matt DiCarlo, our … director, was really good about letting us really explore and place our own stamp on the role as well.”
Booz sees the Dennis character as a man — bedecked in a butler suit and with graying hair — pining for approval. In fact, many of the characters on the stage are in need of the audience’s approval because as they tell this murder mystery everything that could go wrong does go wrong.
“I think, like everything about Dennis, it’s all kind of derivative of approval,” Booz said. “Dennis is just kind of after a friend, any friend at all.”
Helping him yearn for that approval is the talented cast members at New World Stages. He is joined by a company of performers who all need to hit their mark with precision in order for this theatrical train to properly derail. (Read Hollywood Soapbox’s previous profiles of Wrong actors.)
“Everybody is really giving,” said Booz, who earned his BFA in acting from CCM University of Cincinnati. “It’s exciting, and everybody is constantly playing with each other, even if we’re close to 350 performances now. There’s always exciting and new and fresh moments. … The set itself is kind of a character that we get to play with, and sometimes things don’t necessarily go the way that they’re supposed to. But there’s kind of this insurance policy — that is when things go wrong, a lot times audiences just laugh at it, and they just think it’s part of the show. I had to call out halfway through the show back in March I believe. I had a back injury, and as I was on the floor with a back spasm an announcement was made saying that my understudy was going on. And the entire audience laughed.”
Booz said he has always had an inclination toward comedy. He sees the art of making people laugh as a constant negotiation between the performers and the audience members.
“Especially with this play because the audience is such an active participant,” Booz said. “You’re constantly negotiating what their personality is that night, and then the humor of the evening kind of changes I think every night. So it’s the balance of sticking to your guns and understanding that the play works. If an audience is a really rowdy audience one night, you kind of have to take that all into account when it comes to timing.”
His love for acting came later in life. He didn’t catch the bug until he was 16 years old in his final years of high school. In fact, his original plan was to become a visual artist.
“I was 16 and was just taking a bunch of art elective classes through high school,” he remembers. “I was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and from my high school, I went to this theater association conference in Utah. And Anne Bogart was a keynote speaker there, and there was a performance from this performing arts high school in town. And I met some of the kids from there, and I immediately transferred. And my final two years of high school I was at a performing arts high school really giving it my all. It was the hardest I ever worked because I finally found something. I was like, I can really dive into this. This actually makes a lot of sense, and I can do it in a really hyper-focused way. That was really exciting. Late start, but I’m happy to say that I continued it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Play That Goes Wrong, featuring Bartley Booz, is currently playing off-Broadway’s New World Stages. Click here for more information and tickets.
