"There's set pieces falling down, people getting knocked out," said Trevor Braun, who plays Dennis in the show. "Pretty much anything you can imagine that can go wrong does."
After a debut in London, "The Play That Goes Wrong" hit Broadway's Lyceum Theatre in 2017, then transferred to New World Stages off-Broadway in 2019, where it has now been performed more than 2,000 times.
"The show is different every night, because the audiences play such a big part in it," said Kolby Kindle, who plays Trevor. "I enjoy being able to step out and be like, 'I wonder what the vibe going to be tonight. Is it going to be a younger audience? Is it a date night audience?' Because they all respond differently to the show."
In order for everything to go wrong onstage, it is critical that everything goes as right as possible backstage.
"It's another show happening," Kindle said, explaining just how precise everything backstage needs to be. "There's, like, choreography happening, making sure all the timing is right, and everything."
Take the slapstick, for instance, which is a centuries-old comedic tradition and the origin of the term slapstick comedy. When someone claps the slapstick, it makes a distinct noise.
"We have these cameras, so whenever a trick happens, or someone gets hit, we know- the stage manager knows when to call it, so we can ... make the noise with the slapstick so it can happen out there."
Braun loves knowing the show is carrying on comedic traditions like the slapstick.
"It's kind of the same objects that they've been using for centuries at this point," Braun said. "And so it's cool to think that working on the show, we feel like we belong to a long lineage of comedians."
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