Spring seems to be in sight. We should all be frolicking like lambs (except, perhaps, when we’re dealing with taxes). Sunlight has been seen, the snow seems all melted – so far – and spring training is on the radio. Enough with the heavy themes of the winter months, the furrowed brows, the deep sighs and the throwing of nearby objects at television news programs.
To help lighten our moods, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis has given us a murder mystery. Except...well, it’s not quite the classic English manor house whodunit. Definitely not.
The Play That Goes Wrong actually looks like one of the aforementioned, the splendid set from Peter and Margery Spack proving itself to be both even more and even less splendid as the evening progresses. It seems we are to be subjected to the work of the Cornley University Drama Society, whose invitation to the Rep, one finds, perusing the program, was financed by the inheritance of one of the student players. They’re doing The Murder at Haversham Manor. We’re welcomed by the prez of the CUDS, who’s also directing the players. (The actual show is directed by Melissa Rain Anderson.) We even have a listing of the “cast” as well as, a few pages later, the actual cast playing the characters playing the characters. If you follow me, I mean.
And if there were a curtain in the Rep, it would rise before the dead body of Charles Haversham (Benjamin Curns) is settled in place onto a chaise. It’s the evening of Charles’ engagement party to the lovely Florence (Ruth Pferdehirt), and there are no obvious signs of trauma on his body. Of course there’s a snowstorm brewing outside – isn’t there always? – and Inspector Carter (Michael Keyloun, who also plays the director) is summoned by the prancing younger brother of the deceased, Cecil (Matthew McGloin, also doubling as the gardener). There is, of course, a butler (Evan Zes)on scene, and Florence’s brother (John Rapson), too, there for the party and used to dealing with Florence’s hysterical spells.
Not so straightforward as it seems, though – these are very amateur actors, not theatre majors like we find at, say, Webster’s student productions. Declaiming. Missing cues. Forgetting lines. You say you get the idea? Far from it. Please mix in a set that isn’t quite done, a frantic stage manager (Ka-Ling Chung), a distracted lighting and sound operator (Ryan George) and an absolutely immense amount of physical comedy.
While the lines are funny, and the deliberate overacting and flubbing is funnier still, it’s the movement that sets this show apart from the very first. The falls, the crawls, the face plants both vertical and horizontal are almost constant. Director Anderson didn’t use a choreographer for all this, just blocked it herself, apparently. Between that dazzling accomplishment and the cast’s ability to keep it all straight while making sure they don’t do what they’re trained to do, which is act in the traditional theatrical style, is nothing short of stunning.
This is very fine ensemble work, which makes it hard to call out specific actors for their work, but attention must be paid to Ka-Ling Chung as the stage manager and Michael Keyloun, who gives vague hints of John Cleese in this performance. It’s all in keeping with a play that actually did begin with university students putting it together and running it in a 60-seat theater above a pub in the Islington neighborhood of London.
At times the dialogue is lost in the audience laughter, but the pace Anderson wants keeps rolling on, and no audience member will feel shortchanged by the end of the play. There’s enough going on that it’s a show that satisfies, if not the intellect, certainly the funny bone in a most remarkable way.
The Play That Goes Wrong
through April 7
Repertory Theatre St. Louis
Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts
130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves
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