“The Play That Goes Wrong” gets everything right

Palo Alto Players’ production of “The Play That Goes Wrong” is mischievous, charming and over-the-top uproarious.

Expertly directed by Katie O’Bryon Champlin, “Play” moves along so swiftly – with at least three good belly laughs per minute – that the two acts ended too soon for the packed preview night audience, who hooted, hollered and insisted the show’s eight principal actors take a number of curtain calls.

Before the play begins, audiences watch the “backstage staff” make last-minute adjustments to the set, including trying to find a dog that has run off and nailing up parts of a broken mantelpiece. It doesn’t take long for the audience to realize that this is actually the start of the play.

Written 12 years ago by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields of the Mischief Theatre Company in London, “Play” won the 2015 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. The setting is Haversham Manor in the private rooms of Charles Haversham, played alternately by Christopher Mahle and Drew Benjamin Jones (several roles are double-cast). Mahle was a plausible Haversham, although he actually spends most of the play as a corpse.

As Max Bennett (and Cecil Havershamm and Arthur), Braden Taylor steals every scene he’s in. He makes sure to mug, curtsy and flit around the stage every change he gets, and the audience eats it up.

Brad Satterwhite makes a credibly serious Inspector Carter, called in to investigate the murder at the manor. That’s why it’s all the funnier when he, too, begins to complete some fairly acrobatic moves during the show.

As Perkins, the stuffy butler who ends up doing the most impossible juggling acts onstage, Brandon Silberstein adds a big chunk of chuckles to this ridiculously funny show.

Michelle Skinner plays Sandra, the fiancée of Charles Haversham and the sister of Max Bennett. Sandra also ends up a corpse who gets barrels of laughs as people constantly try to move her somewhere to hide the fact that she’s dead.

Besides Taylor and Silberstein, the other cast member who really shines is Damaris Divito as the maid Annie (Divito shares the role with Jen Maggio). Annie is called on to do the most outlandish stunts, such as holding her arms through a wall to hold up candlesticks when the mantel falls down. Later, after Sandra dies, Annie is told she must play Sandra and wear her dress (which is way too large) and her wig (which is way too small).

Perhaps the biggest applause of all should go to the carpentry crew that put together the amazing set. There is a wall of books which is not what it seems; there’s an “elevator” which (offstage) seems to transport characters up to a small second-story study. That second-story room, incidentally, is the setting for some of the most incredible acrobatic tricks by the actors.

Both PAP artistic director Patrick Klein as well as Kevin Davies are credited with the scenic design, and there are a number of carpenters and electricians listed in the program. Greet Jaspaert was the scenic painter.

Three actors get credit as the onstage “additional stage crew” for “fixing things”: Cayleigh Coester, Dana Rakvica and Skylar Riordan. Jenny Garcia did a fine job of designing costumes for this period piece, and Dexter Fidler gets credit as the fight and fall consultant.

As the play ends, one actor utters the line, “How I wish this had ended differently.” But audiences will likely be more than happy with the ending as it is.

“The Play That Goes Wrong” runs weekends through Sunday, Feb. 5, at Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto. Tickets are $30-$57 at www.paplayers.org or 650-329-0891.