Stage actors have to be nimble and quick. Castmates forget lines. Props aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Things go wrong, but the show must go on, sometimes forcing the cast and crew to make it up on the fly. That’s the crux of “The Play That Goes Wrong,” onstage in Red Knight Theatre at North Fort Myers High School this weekend.
“In theater things go wrong, but this is kind of to the extreme,” said Theatre Director Janelle Laux. “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, including every single wall is on the floor by the end of the show.”
The play is a comedy bordering on farce. That suits Laux just fine.
“This show really pushes the students to really get their acting skills under control,” Laux said. “I don't want people to feel comfortable and safe. I want them to push themselves to be better actors.”
North Fort Myers High always assembles a strong cast of student actors. But the star of this show is the set, which self-destructs over the course of the evening.
“This is actually the very first set design done by my father, Tim Turco, and he took the entire set design on, learned how to make the walls fall and how to make all these special effects happen,” Laux noted. “There's a moment where everything that's on the wall falls numerous times for the show and he had to learn how to do all that and it's really impressive to see it.”
Even funnier is watching how the actors compensate for the falling mantel piece, doors that don’t open and props that go missing.
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
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Laux picks the shows that North Fort Myers High will perform each season long before she knows the names, ages and acting experience of her students. That doesn’t really matter.
“I love plays because plays really push actors,” said Laux. “That's when they learn how to do things. They really get to work on their acting skills.”
“We actually have two freshmen in the show this year and I have some new crew members who've never done crew before and so I'm kind of pushing the students, but that's really what I like to do,” Laux observed.
“River Reed” plays our main character, Robert,” Laux pointed out. “He's kind of the male lead.”
Reed has been seen locally in numerous Southwest Florida venues including the Alliance for the Arts, Broadway Palm Dinner Theater, Cultural Park Theater, Florida Repertory Theatre, Fort Myers Theatre, Lab Theater and Melody Lane Performing Arts Center. His stage credits include Tobias for Lab Theater in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Les in “Newsies” and “Mothers and Sons” at Lab Theater. He has also proudly represented a Melody Lane PAC at Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas.
“Robert ‘s best friend is Max, who is played by Cassion Dobson,” Laux added. “Robert's sister is Sandra, and she’s played by Violet Salcedo. And then the murder happened to Jonathan, who is played by Jack Maxwell.”
Aiden Maxfield plays the butler and Joshua Slover doubles as the inspector who comes in to investigate the murder as well as the director of the Drama Society.”
“And then we have students who double as actual stage crew as well as stage crew in the show. Annie is played by Sarah Salerno and Taylor is played by Chloe Abelard.”
The script actually casts males in all but one role.
“But the script is written to allow for gender bending as needed,” said Laux. “For example, the role of Taylor could also be played by a Trevor. We gender bended some other characters and kind of made it work for what we had. But we did stay true to the script minus one character that we switched into a female role.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
