Six years ago the Mischief Theater Company came to Broadway from Britain with “The Play That Goes Wrong,” a crazy comedy about a hapless amateur theater company trying to stage a detective thriller.
This farce was a success, with the weird physical comedy that led to a Tony Award for best set. A national tour was also successful, and a production has been underway on Off Broadway ever since.
Now Mischief plans to return to Broadway with “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” a kind of sequel in which the same theater company tries to stage JM Barrie’s beloved play about an underage child.
“Peter Pan Goes Wrong” is scheduled to begin performances on March 17 and open at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway on April 19. The game plans a limited run of 16.5 weeks (the unusual run length reflects the company’s exceptional branding).
Comedy already has a rich production history – it debuted in a small London theater in 2013, toured Britain in 2014, premiered in London’s West End during the Christmas seasons in 2015 and 2016, and was a BBC television show in 2016. adapted for. The show’s North American journey began last year with productions in Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada. It received generally positive reviews: The Vancouver Sun declared that the game had “absolutely no compensatory social value”. But at its peak, it delivers a joke, most of it funny, about every 10 seconds.
The game’s creators are Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, who also wrote “The Play That Goes Wrong”; The trio will star in their productions again. “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” has the same slapstick sensibility as the previous game, but includes a bit more character development and an even crazier set.
“The fictional theater company is taking on a much more ambitious production with flying, alligators and a spinning stage and they play the play with the same disastrous results,” Lewis said. “You get more and more behind the scenes of all the farce and crazy comedies as well as what happens with the characters.”
The writer-actors said they look forward to returning to Broadway and are aware that the industry is in a very different place than when they first arrived.
Sayer said, “You could say that the work we did before the pandemic was ridiculous and not that important.” Now, I think this kind of work is very important – there’s something very deep in stupidity right now because it’s something everyone needs after what we’ve all been through. “
The game is produced by Kevin McCollum, Kenny Wax, Stage Presence and Catherine Schreiber. McCollum said he wanted to take the show to Broadway for a while, believing that “people want to laugh”.