For sheer entertainment and delightful humour, blended with a bunch of raucous physical comedy, you don’t want to miss seeing “The play that goes wrong.”
It’s Aperture Africa that is staging the slap-stick comedy this coming weekend at Kenya National Theatre.
“I first saw the show on [London’s] West End in 2019 and wanted to stage it ever since,” director Amar Desai tells BDLife.
He has been actively involved in securing the rights to stage it here, which hasn’t been easy, especially as the show is still going great guns on both London’s West End and Broadway in New York.
But he finally got them and also auditioned a marvellous cast of actors, many of whom will be familiar to those of you who attend Nairobi theatre regularly.
For instance, Yafesi Musoke was recently co-starring in ‘Because You Said So’ at Braeburn Gitanga. Daniel Lee Hird just directed ‘1984’ also Braeburn Gitanga and Vikash Pattni was just nominated for his recent performance in Manic Monologues.
Bilal Wanjau was just in Aperture’s previous production, ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Wolf’. He was also in Aperture’s comedy, ‘It Runs in the Family’ with another cast member, Hiran Vara.
And Nixsha Shah was recently in Silvia Cassini’s new play, ‘Speak their names.’ Davina Leonard was in a previous Cassini play, ‘A man like you’.
And that leaves Adarsh Shah who has been in countless shows I didn’t have the opportunity to see.
It's a marvellous cast performing a play within a play that’s been described as a cross between Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes where everything that you can imagine goes wrong.
And many more mishaps that might be unimaginable to most folks, apart from the playwrights, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shield, also go wrong.
The sum total of these ‘unanticipated’ events is hilarious and the kind of humour that transcends verbal language.
Described as ‘the funniest comedy play [ever] staged in the West End,’ I had the privilege of watching a show rehearsal (which opens officially this weekend at Kenya National Theatre) and can testify it’s the style of humour that both adults and children will find irresistible.
The play being staged by the local Drama Society is a murder mystery, a whodunit with more than one twist to it.
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. But there’s a would-be murder of the soon-to-be-wed Charles (Vikash Pattni) who was to marry the beautiful diva-type Florence (Davina Leonard).
The cops are called in, and the police Inspector (Daniel Hind) shows up, intent on investigating whodunit? Yet the show itself seems to still be in the rehearsal phase.
That’s because there are so many screw-ups, from pieces of the set not holding together to uncountable distractions that one can hardly imagine how an audience has paid to watch this catastrophe of a show.
But it is hilarious, and the show ‘must go on’. The play itself is a sort of spoof on comedy itself.
It also makes fun of the competition that actors may feel towards one another in production, the role of envy and jealousy in fueling an understudy’s not-so-secret desire to take over from the lead character.
Meanwhile, the Inspector seems to be moving ahead with his investigation. Yet one can’t help noticing he doesn’t even touch the ‘dead’ body, leave alone check the pulse of the ‘corpse’ to ensure Charles is really dead.
There’s also infidelity going on, which you will have to watch to find out who’s unfaithful with whom.
The other issue that isn’t easy to figure out is people’s motives. In every good murder mystery, all the suspects have a motive for murder.
The fact that Charles has a new will in his pocket suggests maybe someone doesn’t want their place in his previous will to be undermined.
But that is just one of the tricky twists and turns that throw so many loopholes into the play.
Both Charles and Florence have brothers (Yafesi Musoke, and Hiran Vaya) who each have interests of their own, which are also murky.
Their entanglement in matters leads to a marvellous sword fight that is just one of the many elements of physical comedy that is too funny.
Florence is another one who is prone to melodramatic moments leading to fainting scenes that are laughable.
She is such a prima donna both on and off stage - that one can’t help feeling slightly empathetic when one of the backstage crew (Nixsha Shah) tries to step into the actor’s shoes.
I won’t give away what happens in the end, although I will say, like any good murder mystery, it won’t end in a way that could have been easily foreseen.
It’s a show that is jolly good fun, especially at the end when something big happens to Thomas that should keep you grinning and or giggling all the way home.
