GULF SHORES, Ala. — South Baldwin Community Theatre opens its season with a production about a production that falls apart — deliberately, repeatedly and at considerable volume.
“The Play That Goes Wrong” runs for six performances from Sept. 18-27 at the Gulf Shores theater.
Performance Schedule
Friday and Saturday shows: 7:30 p.m.
Sunday matinees (two): 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 students, $23 adults
Where: South Baldwin Community Theater, 2022 West 2nd St., Gulf Shores
Information: 251-968-6721
The Premise
Directed by Ashley Knowling, the play follows the accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society as its members attempt to perform a classic murder mystery.
From missed cues and collapsing scenery to misplaced props and spectacularly bad luck, just about everything that can go wrong does. The comedy is built on physical humor, outrageous mishaps and continuous surprises.
Why This Play Is Harder Than It Looks
A show about incompetent performers requires exceptionally competent ones.
Every collapse, every missed cue, every falling piece of scenery has to be executed precisely on a timing mark, and the actors must play characters who are visibly unaware that anything is wrong. The comedy depends entirely on the gap between what the audience sees and what the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society believes is happening.
The physical demands are real as well. The show involves falls, collisions and set pieces that behave badly by design, which means fight and stunt choreography rehearsed to the same standard as any other blocking. A gag that fails mechanically is not funny; a gag that fails unsafely is worse.
For a community theater, staging it is an ambitious technical undertaking. Scenery designed to collapse on cue and reset between performances is a different construction problem than scenery designed to stay up.
The Play Within a Play
“The Play That Goes Wrong” belongs to a comic tradition with a long history: the backstage farce, in which a theatrical company’s own dysfunction becomes the show.
The form works because it lets an audience in on something normally hidden. Everyone at a play knows, in the abstract, that a set can fall and an actor can forget a line. A show built around those failures makes the machinery visible and turns the audience into knowing participants.
It also flatters the performers. Playing badly, convincingly, on purpose, in front of people who understand the difference, is a demonstration of skill that a straight performance does not offer.
South Baldwin Community Theatre
South Baldwin Community Theatre is a volunteer-powered nonprofit based in Gulf Shores. Its stated goal is to bring the dramatic arts alive to everyone by combining the talents of local residents from all walks of life.
That description is worth taking literally. Community theater casts and crews are assembled from people who have day jobs — teachers, retirees, business owners, students — who rehearse in the evenings for weeks and then perform on weekends. Nobody involved is being paid.
What that produces is a distinctive relationship between a theater and its town. The people on stage are recognizable to the people in the seats, and the audience turns out in part because they know someone in the show.
A Comedy to Open With
Opening a season with a broad physical comedy is a reasonable strategic choice.
Comedies draw audiences that a drama may not, and a season opener sets the tone and, practically, sells the subscriptions and single tickets that fund the productions to follow. A show with a reputation for being genuinely funny brings people who have not been to the theater in a while.
Ticket Pricing
At $23 for adults and $15 for students, the production sits at the accessible end of live theater pricing — a deliberate feature of community theater rather than an accident. Ticket revenue covers production costs; it does not pay salaries, because there are none.
The student rate is the piece that matters most for the art form’s future. A teenager who can see a live play for $15 may become an adult who buys a ticket.
If You Go
What: “The Play That Goes Wrong,” directed by Ashley Knowling
When: Sept. 18-27; Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m.
Where: South Baldwin Community Theater, 2022 West 2nd St., Gulf Shores
Tickets: $23 adults, $15 students
Information: 251-968-6721