What's wrong with "The Play that Goes Wrong" - MAJOR spoiler alert!

The Chief & I found ourselves in NYC over the weekend and managed to find time to see The Play That Goes Wrong.  I knew people who'd seen and loved it, found it very funny.  We didn't; yes, it had its moments, but a "gut-busting" laugh riot?  No.

Warning:  The rest of this post will be full of spoilers.

The premise is a fairly incompetent college/university dramatic society putting on a murder mystery.  Two of the "stagehands" end up getting pulled into the action, at first reluctantly, but then deciding they like it when the audience applauds for them.  The character playing Cecil is your worst ham, smiling at the audience or repeating a bit if they applaud.  Funny the first time or two, but it can get old.

As you can guess from the title, the whole play is full of one mishap or disaster after another.  In fact, the whole "plot" is merely a vehicle to carry as many actor's and tech's nightmares as possible.  This means you find yourself wondering what's going to go wrong next, and when.  As a result, pretty much every performer on stage has to be good at (sometimes very) physical comedy, which probably left most of them with a whole lotta bruises.  The cast we saw did an excellent job at physical comedy, especially Maggie Weston and Matt Walker (Florence and Cecil).  Maggie got dragged upside-down & sideways through a window in Act I, and Matt took pratfalls, executed somersaults, walked into things face first, and generally made it look as though he'd be black and blue from head to toe by the next morning.

The set includes a platform, appropriately furnished, that represents an upstairs study.  Over the course of the play the downstage end drops a few inches two or three times, while there are people standing on it.  My first thought was "Are they OK?!"  Now of course I know that there is no way such a bit of business was allowed without making completely sure they could pull it off safely.  Still, it would be so easy for something unscripted to go wrong that I couldn't relax, for the performers' sake.

There were a few moments when something would happen or someone would say something and the people on stage would pause, or they would draw out a sight gag, milking it for all it was worth.  I know it was done for comic effect, but I felt that in most cases they let it go on too long.

The performers did do a good job, but they were upstaged by the special effects of the disasters.  Those were so well staged (the shifting platform, a trick floorboard, things falling off walls, and so many more) that it's easy to see why the set won a Tony.  The engineering involved in creating those effects so they could be controlled with exquisite timing was impressive!  (We couldn't help but wonder how long it takes the crew to reset everything for the next performance.)

There were a lot of references to actor's nightmares (e.g., an actor redelivering a line, causing everyone else to repeat a scene) and tech's nightmares (a stagelight sparking as its support falls), but a whole play based almost entirely on stringing them together was a lot funnier to the people coming up with the idea than it was to at least these two members of their audience.

Extra quick

Wednesday's extra gig was nothing like the first one.  First of all, there was confusion about check-in.  I reported at site A, as instructed in the email, but the gate guard didn't have my name on his list and sent me to site B.  I drove over there, found someone to check in with, who asked me if I'd checked in and had a fitting yet.  I explained I'd been sent to B from A, so the gentleman found a shuttle driver to take me back to site A for a fitting.  We got there in time to meet the costume designer about to leave for B.  She told us I was indeed supposed to be at B, not A.  Back into the shuttle to B.  By this time, the driver and I were getting quite comfortable with each other and he was warming up on the topic of his hometown football team.

Anyway, so once we'd established that I did indeed need to be at B, not A, for a fitting, Kelly came & approved my suit, but I guess my white top was a little too bright for camera, and my jewelry not conservative enough.  I got to follow her to her trailer, a mobile costume closet, where she found me a dark purplish top to wear and a pair of very small clip-on hoop earrings.  I was then escorted to one of a group of tall director's-style chairs, where Gina fixed my makeup and Adele made my hair presentable.  (Because it needed to look decent, of course it looked a disaster.)  The production assistant, or PA, let me know I was welcome to help myself to "crafty" - the table of food & drink laid out for crew and cast - but I didn't want to mess up my lipstick or get food in my teeth before going on camera.

More confusion:  I was supposed to be one of 2 or 3 "telecom heads".  The PA told me I had a line to learn.  This was news to me!  He gave me his copy of the day's script, showed me the pertinent line, and left me to it.  Apparently something changed somewhere along the line and he didn't get the word, as "Telecom 1" got all the lines (all 2 or 3 of them).  Not a big deal, of course, as I hadn't expected to have any lines.

When they were ready for me, they took me into the shooting area and had me sit on a stool in front of a green screen.  They explained that I'd be a frozen Skype image (scenario was that I was Skyping into a conference call ).  Sound was told not to bother recording.  They positioned me at the desired angle, set a small laptop in front of me off camera, and started filming.  They had me talk a bit, then count down from 100 "with authority".  While I did so, they would have me "look over here; now back at the lens. ... Over here again; back at the lens. ... Now look this way.  Good.  Back to the lens. ... Glance down at the laptop and tap the space bar a coupla times" and so on.  After a few minutes of that, they thanked me and that was it.

I went back to the holding room, changed back into my own top, hunted down Kelly so I could return her top and earrings.  The crew were just starting to dig into lunch, but I'd already been signed out and didn't feel right sticking around, so I loaded my things into my car and left just 3 hours after I first arrived.  My voucher showed my official time as 2 hours & 45 minutes; MUCH shorter than the first gig!  It was further away, too, and involved tolls.  I joked with the Chief that, by the time I bought myself lunch at a nearby Mexican place (some fabulous grilled-shrimp tacos!), I actually lost money working the gig.  That's OK; it was interesting enough to be worth it.

This time they were in an industrial park.  Site B is where they were shooting; it was your typical building, with offices and rooms of varying sizes along the front and a HUGE warehouse space along the back.  Part of the warehouse space is apparently where they do the actual filming, with the rest being storage and staging area.  One wall was floor to ceiling with shelves full of desks!  There were also a few partial "buildings" and other architectural elements there.  While waiting for them to be ready for me, I wandered over to check out the construction.  These pieces were built to last - very substantial floors for the platforms, and 4x4s for some of the uprights.  What most intrigued me, though, was the way the walls were built.  Theater flats are typically 4' wide and 12' tall, built from 1x4s, with cross pieces (toggles) at the 4' and 8' points.  These flats were built with 1x3s, with upright pieces and toggles every foot, so that they looked like 1-foot boxes from a distance.  I was dying to ask why they're built that way but didn't want to interrupt anyone.  Maybe my Stagecraft instructor would know; I'll have to ask...

This singing stuff is an unpredictable business.

Yesterday's voice lesson was one of those that happen every so often and make you wonder why you bother.  Seemed like everything I tried to sing below the staff was mushy, muddy, back in the throat - you name a technical problem, I had it.  My low audition piece (lots of it below the staff) was giving me so much trouble that my teacher and I both decided that I would definitely not be using it for the audition I had last night.  Five hours just wouldn't be enough to whip it into shape.

So that audition last night.  I sang my two higher pieces (one G&S, one Rodgers & Hammerstein).  They both felt good, the audition panel laughed (they're comic pieces, so that's a good thing), and the audition accompanist sightread like a champ and followed nicely, so it was all good.  I'm sure it helped that we'd touched on both pieces in my lesson yesterday afternoon, so all those technical niceties were fresh in my mind.

This afternoon was the mock run of next Saturday's NATS competition.  C has 7 students who'll be competing and 6 of us sang this afternoon.  We had an "adjudicator", we stood in the crook of the piano to sing, just as we will next week, and we were coached in how to introduce ourselves and our pieces.  C had us in age order, starting with her youngest students, which meant I "batted clean-up".  It wasn't too bad being last, as I only had to wait through 5 other people's music.  Having had the benefit of C's training, they all did well.  I got a little over-the-top with my brindisi, which caused one of my notes to "splat", but in general I was pretty happy with how it went, and did have fun singing the music.  Better, C was delighted with how my lowest song went.  She thought it was worlds better than yesterday and was very happy with how quickly I'd managed to incorporate her corrections.  Now if I can just manage to keep them in mind through the week so I've internalized them by next Saturday, when I have to sing for the judges...

The Chief came along for the ride.  (It helped, I'm sure, that I promised him dinner afterwards at a nearby restaurant we love.)  He said that, when I was warming up in the car going over, he wasn't so sure how I'd do, but thought that when it came down to it, I did just fine. :)

Busy theater weekend

Quite the theater weekend I had.  Rehearsal Friday night and again Saturday morning/afternoon, the strike & after party on Saturday, then Sunday I went from the cast rehearsal that afternoon to the orchestra rehearsal that evening.  Audition last night, voice lesson and rehearsal tonight - whew!

Tomorrow night's choir practice was cancelled, so I actually get a night at home for a change.  TW might not recognize me!  :D