.The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong at Left Edge Theatre

Play titles don’t get more succinct than The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong. 

You get both an approximate run time and a plot synopsis in six simple words. It’s an abridged version of The Play That Goes Wrong, which was itself expanded from its original one-act roots after becoming a hit in London, where it continues to run today. Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre has a production running through Nov. 20.

It’s opening night for the budget-constrained Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s production of Susie H. K. Brideswell’s Murder at Haversham Place, a 1920s murder mystery a la Agatha Christie. The crew scurries around the stage, making last-second fixes to the scenery and prop placement. The lights go down, and then they come up (too soon) as an actor attempts to get in place as the murder victim. It’s all comedically-downhill from there.

Charles Haversham (Andrew Patton) has been murdered, and there is no shortage of suspects for the police inspector (Michael Girts) to interrogate. Was it Charles’s fiancée, Florence (Allie Nordby)? His brother, Cecil (Skylar Evans)? His at-one-time brother-in-law-to-be, Thomas (Izaak Heath)? Or might this be the one time where the butler (Larry Williams) actually did it?

The game’s afoot as the cast gamely marches on despite every possible thing that can go wrong going wrong. Scenery mishaps, misplaced props, bobbled lines, an inebriated tech operator (Reilly Milton) and a stage-shy (then stage struck) stage manager (Denise Elia-Yen) are all obstacles to be overcome in honor of the age-old idiom that the show must go on!

And go on it does, for a relatively brief 60-plus minutes. Timing is everything in comedy, and this show moves fast. It doesn’t hurt to have some knowledge of the stage world to appreciate a lot of the humor, but there’s enough physical and verbal comedy at play to make the show accessible to anyone. Some bits missed, but the ratio of hits-to-misses is pretty high.

In his director’s notes, David L. Yen comments on the second-tier status often given to comedy in discussions of “real” theater, despite the unique skill set required to do it well. If the laughter emanating from the mid-week audience in attendance at a recent performance is any meter, his cast has that required skill set.
Left Edge Theatre’s ‘The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong’ runs through Nov. 20 at The California Theatre. 528 7^th St., Santa Rosa. Thu–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun., 2pm. $15–$40. 707.536.1620. leftedgetheatre.com