INTERVIEW: Going ‘Wrong’ on Broadway takes a lot of teamwork

Mistakes on Broadway are usually not met with thunderous applause. Sure, there are the occasional missed lines that elicit a few claps of encouragement. Sure, some performers like to call out smartphone users during the performance. But, by and large, the Theatre District in New York City is an area devoid of imperfections.

Then The Play That Goes Wrong opened on Broadway.

The little-British-play-that-could continues to send audience members rollicking in the aisles at the Lyceum Theatre, and, unlike many of its musical and dramatic cousins on Broadway, this show has lasted for many months with no signs of slowing down.

The original cast members of the play, many of whom actually created the show, have moved on to other projects, but the producers smartly kept the show running with an entirely new ensemble, which continues the laughter on West 45th Street.

The premise is something pulled from an Agatha Christie story. Think The Mouse Trap meets Saturday Night Live, or, as the press notes say, Sherlock Holmes meets Monty Python. The audience has gathered at the Lyceum to watch a performance of The Murder at Haversham Manor, the play within the play. The problem is that the assembled actors from the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are amateurs and unable to deal with missed cues, faulty sets and missed lines. The results are hilarious, making this bad play so, so good.

At the center of the story is Clifton Duncan as Robert, an actor with Cornley who is playing the Thomas role in The Murder at Haversham Manor. That’s an interesting challenge for the accomplished actor because he needs to portray an actor playing another character on stage.

Duncan makes it look easy, but it took a lot of work.

“The audition for this play was … demanding and understandably so because they’re trying to build an ensemble, so they wanted to see groups of people at a time for very long stretches of time,” Duncan said in a recent phone interview. “For busy New York actors, it’s not always easy to get a hold of us because one’s always busy. I auditioned, and I thought to myself … it’s just one of the funniest things that I’ve ever read.”

Duncan found The Play That Goes Wrong so well structured, and he couldn’t stop laughing after reading the jokes. He also didn’t have to put a comedic spin on the line delivery because it comes off even funnier when his character believes himself to be a stellar Shakespearean actor.

“I almost don’t have to be that funny,” he said with a laugh. “Robert … has the intensity and the gravitas because he’s an actor with a capital A, so they were pushing me to just to be as serious as possible. Due to my training and my approach and my skill set, I was able to pull that off. I don’t necessarily consider myself a comedic performer, but I have instincts.”

Duncan, who is making his Broadway debut with the show, has appeared off-Broadway in Assassins, Lost in the Stars, Good Person of Szechwan, Kung-Fu and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. This is the first time he has had to replace another actor in a role, and he found the process quite unique.

“I’ve never replaced anybody in a Broadway show,” he said. “In this case, they were replacing the entire cast, but the original cast also co-wrote the show. And the company is theirs, and the piece is theirs. So a lot of them were sort of hovering around there. … Henry Lewis, who originated the Robert role, was around, but he was more hands off. I think he wanted to give the individual actors [freedom].”

Duncan and the ensemble, which also includes Ashley Bryant, Mark Evans, Jonathan Fielding, Alex Mandell, Amelia McClain, Harrison Unger and Akron Watson, had only three weeks to rehearse the show, which the actor called an “ungodly short amount of time, especially when you throw a bunch of strangers together who are trying to create an ensemble that depends on each other and its chemistry.”

This is when Duncan created the term “rehearsal hell” because the actors needed to learn essentially two roles and two plays; it’s a simple premise, but for the artists on stage, it means double time.

“It’s a play within a play,” Duncan said. “So the play within a play is called The Murder at Haversham Manor. It’s this old-fashioned, sort of Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery. … I as Clifton Duncan have to say, well, how would Robert as an over-competent actor who has an old-fashioned style, how would he approach the part?”

Duncan’s role of Robert is also responsible for some of the most physically demanding comedy in the show, and this keeps the actor on his toes during the two-hour performance.

“What was also unusual about the show is that we got to rehearse on the actual set,” he said. “We would read in the morning, and, because of union rules, we couldn’t have the crew there yet. So we would do improv. We would learn about our characters and create an ensemble and figure out who our version of the Cornley Drama Society is, and then in the afternoon, we would rehearse The Play That Goes Wrong. It was a very chaotic process, but at the end, everything sort of collapsed in place.”

He added: “We have an incredible ensemble of people that was just utterly professional and really on top of their game and really created a bond very, very quickly. … We started in a place of panic and terror and being shot out of a cannon, but we landed on our feet. And the show continues in popularity.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

The Play That Goes Wrong continues at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.