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ALT brings to stage a Monty Python-meets Sherlock Holmes comedy
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Doors stick, props fall and floors collapse.
Actors miss cues, forget their lines and step on fingers in this demolition derby of violent dismemberment. A corpse can鈥檛 even play dead.
鈥淭he Play That Goes Wrong鈥� opens the Albuquerque Little Theatre鈥檚 94th season on Friday, Sept. 8, running on weekends through Sept. 24.
The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society鈥檚 thriller, 鈥淭he Murder at Haversham Manor鈥� is a country-house whodunit in the cobwebbed tradition of Agatha Christie鈥檚 鈥淭he Mousetrap.鈥� The actors are putting on a 1920s murder mystery, but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong does. The accident-prone thespians battle against all odds to make it through to their final curtain call in a simulated creepy English manor drawing room.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a British comedy,鈥� said Henry Avery, ALT executive director. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about a group of amateur performers trying to put on a melodrama.鈥�
Avery had long wanted to stage the play. A traveling version had originally been scheduled to appear at Popejoy Hall during the pandemic shutdown.
鈥淓verybody who鈥檚 ever seen it in New York says it鈥檚 so much fun,鈥� Avery said. 鈥淪o much goes wrong, but they鈥檙e trying so hard to be serious.
鈥淭he plot of the melodrama is someone is murdered on his engagement night,鈥� he continued. 鈥淚t begins with this person lying dead on the sofa.鈥�
In this Monty Python-meets Sherlock Holmes comedy, the leading lady gets knocked out and the stage manager who has never performed has to take her place and read her lines.
Before the production begins, cast and crew members roam the aisles with distraught purposefulness. They are also in full view on stage, making last-minute adjustments to falling fireplace mantels and stuck doors (in vain.)
An anxious introduction from its director and leading man, Chris Bean precedes the show. Mr. Bean vacillates between arrogance and self-abasement as he describes earlier productions by the company that had to be retitled because of limited budgets: 鈥淭wo Sisters,鈥� 鈥淭he Lion and the Wardrobe鈥� and 鈥淐at.鈥�
The play won Best New Comedy at the 2015 Laurence Olivier Awards and ran on Broadway from 2017-2019.
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 going to be good for bringing people back to the theater,鈥� Avery said.
ALT will perform 鈥淐amelot鈥� beginning on Nov. 3 and 鈥淭he Best Christmas Pageant Ever鈥� starting on Dec. 8.
