Our Season 45 opener, “The Play That Goes Wrong,” is unlike any show we’ve ever performed in the past and, for that matter, any show that has ever existed in theatre history. It draws from three schools of theatrical art: whodunnit mystery, slapstick comedy, and the play-within-a-play to create an evening of mayhem that just keeps getting more deliriously funny. Read on as we explore the history of each theatre form and show how this trifecta offers a perfect storm of comedy.
The Mystery Play, Detective Fiction, and Whodunnit
For centuries storytellers have been utilizing mystery plots to keep audiences hooked and dropped into their tales. Early mystery plays of the Medieval period revolved around Biblical accounts and characters, frequently performed as tableaux, a staged scene in which actors do not move, as if they are “acting out” a painting, with song. Theatre designers, writers, and actors went great lengths to ensure that the plays centered on a strong moral theme tied closely to Christian ethics: the consequences of sin, heaven and hell, salvation by Christ, and the themes of each major feast of the liturgical calendar. Elaborate and featuring ordinary people rather than professional actors, these pageants involved practically the whole town (what a dream it’d be for our productions to do the same!). York, England was particularly known for holding these spectacles displayed in public squares. As the Protestant Reformation encouraged the publication of Scripture in the vernacular, mystery plays reflected this as well.
Eventually the mystery genre evolved from these medieval spectacles into what we better recognize today. The Elizabethan and Jacobean styles of theatre followed, and detective fiction rose as a literary and theatrical genre in the 18th century, beginning with Voltaire’s Zadig. Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the character Sherlock Holmes, all made great contributions to early modern detective fiction. The name “whodunnit” first appeared in the Merriam-Webster dictionary after 1930 during the “golden age” of mystery novels and plays: works by Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, and their contemporaries. Popularity of this British genre spread to the U.S. with the board game Clue, released in 1948.
The Play-Within-a-Play
The “play-within-a-play” genre derives from the French term mise en abyme, meaning “placed into the abyss.” Like standing between two mirrors, viewing a painting that has another painting depicted in the scene, or the movie Inception, the “play-within-a-play” format allows for audiences to see both the “play” being produced and the characters and plots of the company of actors producing the 2nd-degree-of-reality show.
The play-within-a-play made its formal debut in 1587 with The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, with Shakespeare’s Hamlet being the more famous Renaissance example (though The Murder at Gonzago is only a small part of the plot, while some plays-within-plays such as The Play That Goes Wrong almost entirely center on the 2nd-degree play). In Cabaret we see not necessarily another play unfolding within the plot, but the Kit Kat Klub’s night show.
Slapstick and Physical Comedy
Slapstick comedy employs the use of larger-than-life violence that’s so absurd in scale, it can’t help but steal laughs from just about every audience. The first widely known use of slapstick is with the Harlequin figure of Italian comedy plays during the Renaissance period, though many glimpses of it can be found in ancient Greek and Roman theatre, and surely in oral performances predating even antiquity.
Physical comedy enjoyed a revival in 19th century American vaudeville–surely Charlie Chaplin’s antics, seemingly chance yet so carefully planned, come to mind. We suppose it hasn’t really left since–think Home Alone, Will Farrell’s movies, and, as you’ll see this September at the Dock Street Theatre, The Play That Goes Wrong.
Eliza Metts, our Marketing Assistant, has a particular love for dramatic theory and dramaturgy. She earned her B.A. in Theatre and English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Wofford College in 2021 and is a native Charlestonian. She is thrilled to return home to work for Charleston Stage and help tell the company’s stories.
Further Reading:
History of York: Medieval Plays
British Library: Medieval Drama