‘Play That Goes Wrong’ comes to Scranton Cultural Center

By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com

Imagine you’re in a play and “there’s a ‘dead guy’ on the couch and the ‘dead guy’ wasn’t there at rehearsal,” Chris French said. What kind of hilarious horseplay might ensue?

Imagine someone tries to move the body “and that doesn’t go well.”

Imagine the Cornley University Drama Society is trying to stage a murder mystery and everything goes wrong, “from missing words to entering too soon and entering too late to set malfunctions and wardrobe malfunctions.”

That’s what you can expect if you attend the national tour of the Olivier Award-winning “The Play That Goes Wrong” Feb. 14 to Feb. 16 at the Scranton Cultural Center.

“It’s a tragedy for us,” cast member French said, speaking as part of the fictional Cornley University troupe. “And it’s a comedy for the audience.”

French plays a character named Jonathan who, in the vintage 1920s play-within-the-play, “Murder at Haversham Manor,” portrays Charles, the murder victim.

“Jonathan missed the dress rehearsal for the play,” French said, “and the reason a lot of things go wrong is because Jonathan has never rehearsed the part.”

While the haplessly inept Cornley University folks are woefully unprepared, French said that wasn’t the case at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem when he was a student there. “It was nothing like this,” he said with a laugh, adding he and his fellow students worked hard to “make everything go right.”

However, he can look further back, to some middle school productions that had a hiccup or two.

“One time I had to kick open a door and make an entrance and the door flew right off its hinges,” he said. “There also was a time — never work with children or animals — when we had a live goat onstage. The goat got scared and suffice it to say, the goat had to wear a little diaper.”

The touring production of “The Play That Goes Wrong” will spend Valentine’s Day weekend in Scranton, and French predicted it could be a good way to spend date night “if you’re into two-plus hours of non-stop laughter.”

“Stretch your cheek muscles before you come,” he said. “That’s what we always hear. People say afterward their faces hurt from laughing and smiling so much.”