Theatre review: Arts Club production of The Play That Goes Wrong goes hilariously right
Great performances and impeccable set design and stage management ensure that the comedy about a hapless theatre company is a chaotic mess in all the right ways
Zander Eke, Genevieve Fleming, and Andrew McNee in The Play That Goes Wrong. Photo by Moonrider Productions for the Arts Club Theatre Company
The Arts Club Theatre Company presents The Play That Goes Wrong at the Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island to August 16
WHETHER IT’S A dropped line or a missing prop, when something goes wrong on stage, an actor must find a way to adapt and move on without letting the audience notice the mistake. If the actor does this well, no one is the wiser. After all, most of the time the audience isn’t going to know the script! How are they going to know something has gone wrong?
The show, as they say, must go on. And no one knows that better than the Cornley Drama Society in their attempts at staging—well, anything.
The Play That Goes Wrong follows this disaster-prone theatre troupe on opening night of their production of The Murder at Haversham Manor. Despite their absolute best efforts, the show runs into issue after issue after major issue. The set isn’t finished, actors fumble lines and butcher pronunciations, and literal fires break out.
It’s a chaotic mess—but for the Arts Club, crafting that perfect mess took an incredible amount of strategy. As director Josh Epstein told Stir recently, it takes precision to make mishaps look accidental, and it’s clear that the entire cast and creative team took this challenge seriously.
The production is hilarious, and while a lot of that can be chalked up to the original book by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, credit must also be shared with Epstein and his team for their incredible attention to detail and commitment to the bit(s).
Andrew McNee, Scott Bellis, and Praneet Akilla in The Play That Goes Wrong. Photo by Moonrider Productions for the Arts Club Theatre Company
The ensemble cast features Praneet Akilla, Pedro M. Almeida-Siqueria, Scott Bellis, Zander Eke, Ben Elliott, Genevieve Fleming, Alexandra Lainfiesta, Andrew McNee, Argel Monte de Ramos, Kelli Ogmundson, and Marco Walker-Ng. All throw themselves into the chaos with over-the-top accents and eccentric characterizations.
Some of the “actors” in the Cornley Drama Society shamelessly cheese it up for the spotlight and applause—like Eke’s delightfully campy Max and Fleming’s spotlight-hogging Sandra—while others demand to be treated as serious, highbrow thespians, like Akilla’s high-strung Chris.
Together, they bring a genuine and desperate “show must go on” quality to the stage in a way that any fan of the Muppets could truly appreciate. They push through agonizingly delayed lighting and sound cues, stuck in frozen, dramatic tableaux while waiting for the tech booth to catch up. They confidently butcher the English language—proudly pronouncing debut, façade, and perpetrator as “day-boo”, “fack-ade”, and “purple-traitor”. And, as set pieces drop like flies around them, they plow ahead with their original stage directions as if nothing is amiss.
For all these stunts and gags to go perfectly wrong (read: right) every night, major kudos must go to the entire creative team. The execution requires what I can only imagine is a 1,000+ numbered cue track for the stage managers. Mike Kovac’s meticulous fight direction must be commended for its variety (for a show that’s 80% visual gags, this is impressive) and absurdity.
Ultimately, however, the real star of the show is Ryan Cormack’s stunning, crumbling set. Adorned with all the traditional trappings of a 1920s whodunnit—complete with old books, paintings, a chaise longue, and a set of swords ideal for an accusatory duel, should it come up—the set also features a tech booth perched upper stage right, peering over the chaos and ready to shout a line whenever an actor loses their place.
The most shocking visual gags of the production come from Cormack’s insane, deteriorating design. With a second act even more jam-packed with falls and malfunctions than the first, the production spirals into a brand of buffoonery that calls back to the classic stunt comedy of Monty Python and Leslie Nielsen—all wrapped in the cozy charm of a dusty old English murder mystery.
In a summer where Vancouver seems completely soccer-obsessed, it’s refreshing to know there’s a ragtag drama troupe rallying together to bring folks a truly great piece of theatre. Even if everything does end up going spectacularly wrong. 
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