INTERVIEW: The play where if it goes right, something has gone ‘Wrong’
Photo: From left, Matt Walker and Brent Bateman star in The Play That Goes Wrong off-Broadway at New World Stages. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
The Play That Goes Wrong could be subtitled The Play That Never Gives Up. The hilarious comedy, which depicts the crazed shenanigans of a theater troupe screwing up a murder mystery performance, originated in London before it jumped the Pond and opened on Broadway. The play, quite amazingly, ran for a few years, becoming one of the most successful productions in recent history.
The show, which comes from the Mischief Theatre, has also launched a national tour and is now playing off-Broadway at New World Stages.
Each night, this troupe of actors tries their best to produce a murderous drama similar to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap; however, from almost line one, the actors and backstage crew fall apart in front of the audience (ditto for the set). Lines are forgotten. Cues are missed. Sets begin to fail.
Of course, the actors’ dismay is the audience’s delight.
At the center of the off-Broadway production is Brent Bateman, playing the role of Robert. The actor is an alumnus of the national tour of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular and has performed regionally at Hartford Stage, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and Triad Stage, among others.
“I hadn’t been seen for this show in any of its other incarnations,” Bateman said in a recent phone interview. “I was brought in for this off-Broadway setting of a new cast and ensemble, and I went in. And I recognized our director, Matt DiCarlo, who set the tour and who was the production stage manager for the Broadway run. He’s a friend of my girlfriend’s, and I had no idea that he was handling the direction of this off-Broadway run. So I was delighted to see his name on the roster when I went in, and it was one of the most delightful audition processes I’ve ever had. There’s been a few gems over the years where you go on, and you say, ‘Well, that was actually fun and not just mind-bendingly nerve-wracking.’”
Bateman performed for a small number of people, and then he was called back to perform for Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, the writers of The Play That Goes Wrong and the show’s original cast members.
“They put us through, in groups, various improv exercises and different bits of rehearsal with the script and started pairing us up with people that they thought we might work well with as a cast,” he remembers. “That was the real treat of the audition process was working hands on with them and hearing their input about how these jokes are intended to land and what makes them successful.”
Bateman has been a big fan of physical comedy for quite some time. He remembers enjoying the wacky Warner Bros. cartoons as a child, and he grew to love the comedic sketches of Monty Python as well. He was fond of “all these silly comedies that have roots in the very earliest of clowning and in commedia dell’arte. All of it is traceable back to there, and I am a big fan, always have been. I love doing other things, too, but it’s always a treat to get to make people laugh.”
Still, for quality comedy, the physical toll on Bateman and the cast is tremendous. They are bouncing around nonstop at New World Stages for two hours, eight times a week.
“We really have to go through a lot physically, so there’s an exhaustion of the repetition of having to lift lots of things and fall off things and into things and all that sort of stuff,” he said. “There’s a tax there, but there’s a greater fatigue that sets in on just having to be on high alert and hyper-focused for the purposes of maintaining the quick pace of the comedy and the purposes of being able to maintain safety. You have to be amped on adrenaline the whole time in order to take everything in at a pace at which it can stay safe.”
On occasion, small bits of the play will go wrong (or go right, in this case). These tiny misfires are unnoticeable to the audience, and the cast has actually rehearsed contingency plans in case the mistakes disrupt the flow of the evening.
“Our set, there’s just so many moving parts to it, and human error can cause a wrinkle in the system,” he said. “Sometimes there are just malfunctions with the operating system of the automation part of the set. It’s all very rare, but we’re prepared for all of those things when they do happen. We have, in fact, rehearsed contingency plans for some of the major events that can go ‘right.’ We love it when the show goes wrong, but when it starts going right, it becomes really tedious really fast.”
To overcome any obstacles, whether planned or not, Bateman and his fellow cast members need to rely on one another to pull them through the performance. They are a true ensemble, even though by the end of the play their characters all seemingly hate one another and are at wit’s end.
“There’s a huge sense of trust, and I would include all of us actors in that circle of trust,” Bateman said. “And then I would widen it to include the great crew who are backstage because they are perhaps the most important character in the show that we get to do battle with, those people back there making the set and props do all the magical things. So there’s a huge amount of trust that when I look into my scene partner’s eyes I know they’re going to set up the joke properly so that it lands not only this time around, but the way the script is written, it has to land usually two or three more times throughout the course of the play. And if it’s not established perfectly early on, then we miss out on those laughs as we go along.”
He added: “There is whole-hearted, never-doubted trust in all of those people up on the stage. Casting did such a great job getting this group of people together. Just from day one, there was never any fear about taking the risk because you know that you’re fully supported by everyone else.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Play That Goes Wrong, featuring Brent Bateman, is now playing New World Stages in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
