‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’ Broadway Review: All Goes Right As Neil Patrick Harris Joins Mischief Makers
20.04.2023 - 02:19
/ deadline.com
All’s right in the world when Peter Pan Goes Wrong.
The latest impeccable demonstration of disaster-farce concocted and performed by Britain’s gift-to-the-world Mischief Theatre, Peter Pan Goes Wrong currently guest stars Neil Patrick Harris, who fits in so well with the ensemble that he seems like just another one of the gang. That’s high praise for both.
Opening tonight at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Peter Pan Goes Wrong proves that Mischief’s immensely popular The Play That Goes Wrong – which opened on Broadway in 2017 and remains in New York at the New World Stages Off Broadway – was no fluke. Indeed, Mischief seems to have accomplished on the stage what many a film studio has done on the screen: built a franchise.
Like The Play That Goes Wrong, PPGW uses a play-within-a-play structure as both loving tribute to theater and knowing satire on the narcissism and fearlessness required to make it.
This time around, the (fictional) Cornley Youth Theatre, an amateur (adult) troupe with more gumption than talent, is staging a (very) low-budget production of the J.M. Barrie classic Peter Pan.
As the real-world audience files into the Barrymore, stagehands – or, spoiler alert if you need one, the Peter Pan Goes Wrong cast portraying stagehands – snake scary looking electric cords from the stage, where lights need lighting, over the audience and to electrical outlets somewhere near the lobby.
Soon enough we learn that Cornley’s most recent production – a revival of Oliver – met with a gruesome fate (a large man, a small child, a stumble, a car blocking the way of an ambulance, and, well, you get the picture). Peter Pan will be Cornley’s shot at a comeback.
Anyone who saw Play That Goes Wrong knows what’s next: Sets