The Play That Goes Wrong

By: Freya Sarmiento ‘28

Vail Mountain School’s Upper School Performance Art class is putting on “The Play That Goes Wrong” this weekend, November 14-16 at 6:30 pm. Our school has been working hard to be able to deliver this play. Vail Mountain School deems theater an important part of education: Theater helps kids from all grades to get to know each other and expand their community it also allows them to gain confidence to speak and act in front of a large audience, building character. Our student actors looked into five plays this semester and chose “The Play That Goes Wrong” to perform. Every year the program chooses different genres such as mysteries, dramas, and much more but they choose this year to be a comedy play.

“The Play That Goes Wrong” was written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of Mischief Theatre Company. It was first performed in 2012 in (fill in the place)The play is a murder mystery where things didn't go as planned. The original script tells the story of Character Charles Haversham,  the man who got killed in the Haversham Manor. The lead detective is an actor whose name is  Carter. He goes through many different investigations to try and find clues to catch who the killer is. But through bad management the day it was first performed in 2012 behind the scenes, every possible thing that could have gone wrong did go wrong. The set was not even finished, but still, the director tries to finish the play, and they followed through to the second act. With actors going missing, they leave home and some just disappear not to be seen, only finally being discovered days later. With the set starting to collapse, the cast gets hurt. Mayhem ensues, the acting gets worse, and the set becomes increasingly dangerous. They manage to finish, but just barely. It turns out this was just how the play was written, so everything went just according to plan because when the three writers produced “The Play That Went Wrong,” they were goofing around and wrote this play to be as chaotic as possible. They just wanted to create a play that was fun for the audience and the actors. 

Though this play was a complete mess, it turned out to be a great success having great popularity among the audience. To this day, the play has been notorious for attracting large audiences and being one of the most hilarious plays. This play even won various awards including the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, the Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for Best Play, and many other awards. It even fueled the creation of two other spin-off shows: “PETER PAN GOES WRONG” and “THE COMEDY ABOUT A BANK ROBBERY.” 

Vail Mountain School will be changing and enhancing some parts of the play to fit more with our actors' personalities. After an interview with actors who are in the play that goes wrong, they report that they have been enjoying their time being able to become someone with a different and new personality with no one judging who they are. They can develop their roles as characters, being as silly as they can. Everyone in our community is welcome to come; not only students from Vail Mountain but also parents, teachers, and students from other schools to come and have a lovely time with this being the first time Vail Mountain has ever performed the play that goes wrong come and support us!