I know that I'm not crazy, despite all the rave reviews making me question that. I found "The Play That Goes Wrong" pretty funny. This play was complete, entirely unfunny.
Let's start with the jokes -- "comedy" is in the title, after all. The jokes were nearly entirely derivative and unoriginal -- I've all seen almost every gag in here in some better form or fashion. The great "Who's On First?" by Abbott and Costello is borrowed completely and less funnily, there's a whole bit about saying "over" at the end of a walkie talkie conversation that is peeled directly from "Family Guy", a repeated hitting of a person on the head for no apparent reason a la Three Stooges, etc. etc. The gags were also too long by about half. There were a few moments I certainly laughed at, but it was as if the show was entirely aware that these moments are very few and far between. So, they either stretched these jokes out so far that you actually hoped they just would move the hell on, or came back and did they same EXACT gag sometime later in the show, now completely devoid of the element of surprise that actually causes a person to laugh.
Let's move on to the characters. First and foremost, I have to point out something, having seen "The Play That Goes Wrong" and "The Comedy About a Bank Robbery" in a span of two days. In each play, there was one black man in the cast who had what I would call a major role -- the butler in the former, and "Cooper" the cop in the latter. The PRIMARY joke of both of their characters is that they are mentally challenged and cannot read. And all the white people in the show point out constantly how idiotic they are, and how much they cannot read. In "The Play That Goes Wrong", the black guy literally has to write big words down on his hand and completely mispronounces them. Then he cries about it. That's his main gag. In this show, the black guy's character is out-of-his-mind stupid, and even has a line where someone says "Do you read?" and his response is "With help." He's actually too stupid to even be self-conscious about it. And everybody in the audience is cracking up like it's the damn 1950s. I don't know if these characters were originally written for a black person, but it's a terrible look.
I will say every other character in this show is barely more intelligent, which is a problem; you have to be able to at least somewhat relate to characters or situations in a comedy to create the humor. These characters are so moronic that it's impossible to relate. In every situation, unless you COMPLETELY suspend belief, you find yourself completely removed because there are no humans on earth who are as stupid as these people.
I honestly don't even want to talk about the plot. It hinges on a person who breaks out of jail to rob a smalltime Minneapolis bank of a rare diamond that some random European prince has entrusted them with for literally no reason at all. The plot holes from there on are innumerable, to a frustrating degree. I know it's secondary to the gags, but there has to be SOMETHING coherent to string it all together. Not the case here. What strings it together are musical interludes where the cast sings in entirely mediocre fashion. And why is everyone like 25 years old, playing characters who are supposed to be in their 50s? It looks like a university production where older actors just aren't available. But they obviously are!
This is a lazy, unfunny show, and one that seems like it needed about 2 more years of workshopping before being put on a stage. But I bought tickets because reviews in reputable newspapers are pretending otherwise. So I'm giving my voice to the few who aren't bamboozled by lowest common denominator humor that requires you to shut your brain down entirely. read more