On the 16th, 17th and 18th of November, Linsly made its return to theater with The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong. The shortened version of the Broadway hit and award-winning comedy The Play That Goes Wrong was a hit with Linsly students, staff, parents, and other guests.
As the play began, the audience could observe what seemed to be stage hands struggling with aspects of the set, including desperately attempting to attach certain pieces to the rest of the set. The stage hands appear to be in conflict on stage, but eventually give up and the play officially begins. A mystery, the characters of the victim’s servant, friends, family, and an inspector attempt to solve the murder of Charles Haversham despite an increasing number of seemingly accidental mishaps.
However, it soon became clear that this play was an intentional comedy of errors. As actors read words written on their hands in marker, grappled with broken props and falling apart pieces of the set, accidentally knocked each other out, and put out fires, the work the actors had put into each one of the hilarious “errors” became evident.
Mr. Frank Wilson, Linsly teacher and the director of the play stated “The rehearsal process was longer than would normally be needed for a one-act play, but the numerous visual jokes required us to put a lot of extra time into the practices.” The hard work and choreography put into some of these jokes was especially noticeable in the scenes where characters were knocked out and subsequently moved.
The steady stream of comical mishaps was enough to keep the audience laughing throughout the play and made it difficult to choose a particular scene as a favorite or as the funniest. Cast members Cole Bloomfield, Gailya Dodd, Nicholas Earls, Caroline Higginbottom, Anthony Mixer, John Papadimitriou, Xander Plute, and Tommy Turak were quite skilled in their roles, complimented by Mr. Wilson as “This was one of the most talented casts I have ever worked with.”
Overall, The One-Act Play That Went Wrong was a wonderful start for Linsly’s first theater season after COVID-19. The Linsly Line staff joins the rest of the school in looking forward to the other productions that will be presented later in the year.
Photo credit: Bruce Edinger
