Paramount, Marriott veterans trade song and dance for slapstick and pratfalls in 'The Play That Goes Wrong'

Actor Michael Kurowski never imagined he'd perform a straight-up comedy. Then he signed on for “The Play That Goes Wrong,” the hit farce whose recently announced second extension at Chicago's Broadway Playhouse will keep audiences laughing through the end of May.

“I never saw myself doing this kind of thing,” said Kurowski, a veteran of Paramount and Marriott theaters. “Musicals are my bread and butter.”

The same could be said of castmate Joseph Anthony Byrd, who's performed in tuners at Paramount, Marriott, Chicago Shakespeare theaters and in “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

“We always joke that this is a musical but without singing. All the physical comedy is very choreographed,” he said, referring to the copious amount of slapstick and stunts. “With the amount of energy and how fast and brisk it is, it reads and moves like a musical,” he said.

The 2012 comedy by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields is about an amateur theater company - The Cornley University Drama Society - attempting to stage a fictional British whodunit with a woefully inept cast performing on a precarious set. The result is an evening of comic mayhem where anything that could go wrong, does.

Byrd describes “The Play That Goes Wrong” as a cross between Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes that incorporates smart jokes, simple jokes, broad comedy and slapstick.

“It's just a good time,” he said. “We're rooting for (the Cornley actors) making the best of the worst possible situation.”

He and Kurowski say there have been times something actually did go wrong during a performance, not that audiences would notice what with the general pandemonium that persists from before the curtain rises until it comes down.

They have contingency plans for every possibility, said Byrd, who recalled one performance when Kurowski's character was to toss a stack of papers at him, only there were no papers. So Byrd picked up a piece of confetti on stage and used it instead.

One time during previews, Kurowski halted a scene mid-performance after a prop malfunctioned. Audience members thought it was part of the show, he said.

“We're so well-rehearsed, this thing is like clockwork,” Byrd said. “We have an answer for everything.”

Keeping up the farce's frenetic pace over two hours takes a toll on the actors. Kurowski says it's the most physically intense show he's done.

“It's exhausting,” he said. “I get home at 10:30 p.m. and get a bowl of cereal I'm so hungry.”

Keeping up a fever pitch for two hours takes stamina. “But it's what we love to do,” Byrd said.

“When you're an actor and it's what you love to do, anytime you get an opportunity to dive in and do your thing it's always a gift,” he said.

“The Play That Goes Wrong”

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, through May 29

Where: Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut St., Chicago, (800) 775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com

Tickets: $30-$80

COVID-19 precautions: Proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test and masks required