ASF: "The Play That Goes Wrong"

Buckle-up, Montgomery! -- A raucous laugh-a-minute farce launched the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's 2026-2027 Season on Friday night to a large responsive crowd. -- The Play That Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields has been performed in theatres worldwide since its London debut in 2012, and ASF director Quin Gresham's detailed iteration demonstrates both the play's infectious charm and it's ability to provide an antidote to the cares of the world around us.

It's all in the title: a well-intentioned yet mediocre English theatre company is producing The Murder at Haversham Manor [a whodunnit in the manner of Agatha Christie], but they are so understaffed and underrehearsed, that just about anything that could go wrong actually does. Even before the curtain rises, we see the company making last-minute repairs to the set, and hear an apologetic curtain speech that begs us to be kind to their efforts.

So, it's pretty much an extended one joke show that we watch disintegrate before our eyes. Never mind. No details or spoilers are required. The mad-cap energy and the multiple surprises in the plot are enough. A lot will go wrong.  Just let yourselves follow the unpredictable silliness and laugh till your cheeks hurt. 

All the conventions of an old fashioned murder mystery are there, but complications increase as actors mess up their lines and invent dialogue on the spot while props, costumes, and set pieces fall apart. Yet, "the show must go on".

The skills it takes to pull this off are admirable, with rigorous demands and mutual trust of the entire company both on stage and off: the acting ensemble are as adept at slapstick as they are at comic timing [they make it look easy, even the dangerous parts]; the set design and it's numerous working or not-working parts sustains a lot of abusive treatment; the lighting and sound scores are spot on; and the wizardry of the Stage Management team and running crew deserve the applause they receive at the curtain call.

Thanks to ASF for an excellent start to the Season.

Theatre AUM: "The Mercy Project"

Here's Theatre AUM yet again pursuing "educational theatre" at its core by showcasing an important little-known American female pioneer: a Colonial-Revolution Era poet, playwright, satirist, historian, epistolographer, and political activist named Mercy Otis Warren [1728-1814]. 

Director Val Winkelman has curated and devised several of Warren's works into what she has titled The Mercy Project, mixed them with period songs and dances, and engaged her cohort of nine actors and four musicians to show the remarkable breadth of Warren's output, and to allow them to resonate across the centuries with her concerns about tyranny and liberty, the role of women in public life, and a necessary balance between the rights of all people and the dignity of government. 

Performed in stunning period costumes and largely in a presentational declamatory style, the veteran and neophyte actors give life to Warren's words and ideas, and conscript audiences to find their own connections to them; all in less than an hour's stage time.

Some biographical details are scattered throughout the production: she had little formal education, but learned side-by-side with her brothers who were tutored at home; she was admired by such notables as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; she was a leading promoter of opposition to British rule [her brother once said that "Taxation without representation is tyranny"]; in 1805, she authored the first History of the American Revolution; her home became a hub of revolutionary activism.

Perhaps it's time to investigate Warren's output and encourage productions of her plays. -- Perhaps it's also time in our current political climate to take her advice to become better informed on real issues, to demand honesty and accountability from our elected representatives, and to restore the ideals that will allow us to truly celebrate our 250th Anniversary.