'Play that Goes Wrong' marvelously funny at Croswell Opera House

ADRIAN — Pretty much every stage disaster that could occur does in the Croswell Opera House’s current show, but given that it’s “The Play that Goes Wrong,” that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.

The play-within-a-play, written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields (who also wrote a followup of sorts, “Peter Pan Goes Wrong”), centers on an amateur theatrical troupe, The Cornley Drama Society. The troupe is putting on an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, set in 1922, called “The Murder at Haversham Manor.”

Tip to audience members: get there early enough to watch the onstage goings-on as the Drama Society prepares for their play’s curtain time, because the comedy begins before the show even starts.

And so do the mishaps, which only snowball as “The Murder at Haversham Manor” progresses. There are stuck doors, actors who can’t remember their lines, late entrances (or way too early ones), misplaced props, pieces of the set crashing down around the cast, and much, much more.

Plus, as if all that’s not enough for the beleaguered members of the Drama Society to deal with, there’s the situation that develops when the stage manager gets pressed into service to replace one of the cast, and eventually that cast member returns and wants her role back.

The end result is two hours of complete mayhem — and, no question about it, it’s one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see on the Croswell stage or, for that matter, anywhere.

The old adage that “comedy is hard” could never be more true than in this show. The cast’s timing has to be impeccable and the actors have to think on their feet if something doesn’t go exactly as planned. Besides that, there’s a real challenge involved in making things look completely spontaneous when they’re actually not.

But this cast more than rises to the occasion. The ensemble, made up of Kylie Bushman, Chris Stack, Maxwell Lam, Kori Bielaniec, Chris Sancho, Jared Hoffert, Scott Leake and Meg Clark, is absolutely spectacular, with all the comedic chops required to make this show soar. They play off each other perfectly and, as is essential for any good ensemble cast, they all just fit so well together.

Major kudos go to director Meghan C. Hakes and everyone else involved, not only for choosing such an excellent cast but for the massive amount of work, and stage trickery, that it takes on the technical side to pull a show like this off.

The Bartley H. Bauer-designed set looks exactly as it should, meaning that it looks like an amateur theater company built it, and it certainly looked on opening night like everything went according to plan as things didn’t work or outright fell apart.

And if things DON’T go according to plan, well, who’s to know? This is a show, after all, where if something goes wrong, it may or may not actually be supposed to happen that way.

Even the costuming has to be in on the act, so to speak, because not only did costumer Alexandria Szczotka have to design clothing that looks right for a group of actors doing a 1920s British murder mystery, but it had to be constructed in a way that holds up to all the physical comedy, which is no small feat.

Impressively, too, cast and crew have struck a perfect balance in the show’s timing. It really is two hours (plus intermission) of complete and utter chaos, and the pace has to be downright frenetic in order for the play to really work. But it’s also possible for a speed like that to step all over itself, and that doesn’t happen in this production. All the gags get enough time for the audience to appreciate each one before the next disaster occurs.

By the time the cast members take their immensely well-deserved bows at the end of “The Play That Goes Wrong,” you might well wonder how they possibly got to the end of the show with the same amount of energy with which they began — or even how they got through the show at all, for that matter.

But all that hard work more than pays off, with a play that’s not only marvelously funny but perfectly executed in all its silliness. If laughing pretty much constantly for two hours is what you want out of a show, then this one will do it.

If you go

WHAT: “The Play That Goes Wrong”

WHEN: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 14; 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 18; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 20; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 21

WHERE: Croswell Opera House, 129 E. Maumee St., Adrian

TICKETS: $22-$44 for adults, $15-$25 for students

HOW TO ORDER: Online at croswell.org or by calling 517-264-7469

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Review: 'Play that Goes Wrong' marvelously funny at Croswell