The Play That Goes Wrong left me feeling a little conflicted. On the one hand, I enjoyed it immensely. On the other, certain aspects were a little lacklustre.

The Play That Goes Wrong (herein Goes Wrong) is touring in Australia and New Zealand, having just concluded its Melbourne rounds, and slowly making its way from Port MacQuarie to Perth. It's celebrating its tenth anniversary, and it is an anniversary that is well deserved. Goes Wrong is a play written and originally performed by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of the Mischief Theatre Company. It has been the longest running comedy production in London, having premiered in 2012. I am unsure as to where the number ten comes from, seeing as the original Australian tour began in February 2017, but these guys are theatre folk and not advanced mathematicians.

Disclaimer: my point of view is coloured by my familiarity with Mischief Theatre. I've seen their television plays as well as their TV show The Goes Wrong Show. Floundering in the face of monumental fuckuppery is the well to which the play often draws from.

Seeing that Mischief Theatre has been doing this since 2012, and has since branched out into different (although more of the same) ventures, how does the original production stand? Do the cast live up to their London predecessors?

After ten years, the play is still an effective piece of comedy, but the production was very slick and polished, which undercut the comedy. While it's clear that the cast are well trained and good at their jobs, oftentimes there wasn’t space for a joke to sit and breathe, especially because the “mishaps” and “malfunctions” are supposed to appear unscripted. There is a lack of deliberateness, a rush to reach the next punchline. There is a lack of stunned and dry delivery that comes with amateur actors coming face to face with the slow crumbling of the set.

In terms of individual performances, they were fine. Just fine. Nobody really stood out. The cast do excellent jobs of portraying incompetent actors in a play where everything goes to shit. They deserve their paychecks. But no one will be winning an Oscar. During the show, I found myself comparing the cast to its original British performers. The cast felt like impressions of the original Mischief production. Robert Grove (portrayed by Joe Kosky in the Australian production and Henry Lewis in the original) is an example. Lewis portrays Grove as a loud, slightly narcissist with a tendency to drag the last word of a sentence. Kosky emulates that, but without a personal spin. I think it's an effective performance with nothing wrong, but could be called unoriginal.

Although, in defence of the cast, Goes Wrong is a very physical comedy that focuses more on making the audience laugh rather than presenting nuanced characters with complex motivations. It’s designed to entertain, and not really much else. The performances don’t need to be layered, but I think it doesn’t hurt to try. Simple theatre, not Shakespeare.

Being familiar with Mischief Theatre for a while, you can sort of predict the sort of gags that'll appear. Malfunctioning doors, audio and lighting mishaps, terrible line deliveries, physical trauma and incapacitation, props misfiring, et cetera. The play does tend in favour of these gags, and I think that what was less utilised was comedy that focused on the actor's “unprofessionalism” rather than freak mishaps and stage errors. It definitely felt smoother and in the parts where actors could let their characters shine, instead of being subject to a world of theatre which wants them dead.

This sort of gag is best exemplified in Pitruzzello's Max, Astrid John's Sandra, and Charalambous' Annie, with Max vying for audience approval while Sandra and Annie fight for the spotlight. Actors letting their personal vendettas and emotions through in ways that “hamper” the performance. I liked that, and I think it's a part of Goes Wrong that is often overlooked in favour of the more explosive and straightforward “malfunctioning props” gag.

All in all, good play. More could've gone wrong.