Review: Flying High and Falling Hard in ‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’

Six years ago, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society brought its production of “The Murder at Haversham Manor” from its home base in England to Broadway. Mayhem ensued. Part of the manor collapsed. An actor was poisoned in a prop mix-up. After the leading lady was knocked unconscious by a door, she was replaced by the stage manager; when knocked unconscious as well, he was replaced by a sound technician and eventually, somehow, a grandfather clock.

The company has grown up since then, or down, or perhaps just sideways. Rebranded as the Cornley Youth Theater, and for reasons of liability or just sheer embarrassment no longer associated with a polytechnic institute, it has returned to Broadway with its children’s version of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.” Many of the same disasters happen chez Darling as happened at Haversham Manor, or close variations on them. Let’s just say that Peter doesn’t fly so much as flail while airborne. He, too, is knocked unconscious.

And so may you be, with laughter, especially if you did not see the earlier show, which despite its disguise of amateurism was a highly polished production called “The Play That Goes Wrong.” For the Cornley players (like the Cornley Theater) are of course fictitious, part of a tradition of farcical comedies featuring terrible actors that goes back at least to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” which opened Wednesday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, with a game Neil Patrick Harris in a guest role, the jokes and mishaps are still funny, if not quite as magical the second time around.

For one thing, if you are already familiar with the Cornley modus maloperandi, you will spot some of the setups the moment you take your seat. That’s assuming the panicked performers, bickering in the auditorium preshow, let you sit.

Onstage, the Darlings’ nursery looks as if it were built on a budget not greater than the cost of a ticket, with a rickety three-level bunk bed, a wobbly casement window and wiring that’s already sparking before the lights go down. The “flying operator” credit in the Cornley program inspires little confidence: “Not yet known.” And the turntable that will deliver the children to Neverland looks just as likely to deliver them to the emergency room.

Perhaps 500 things go wrong in “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” some of them nearly fulfilling Peter’s prediction in the Barrie play: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Peter spends much of the play upside down or in bandages. Nana, the Darlings’ Newfoundland-slash-nursemaid, gets trapped trying to squeeze through a dog door, and has to be chainsawed out. Nor is this the first time the actor playing Nana has faced an onstage disaster. In the Cornley production of “Oliver!” some years ago, he squashed the title character.

That Nana is haunted by the memory — and that each of the other actors has a pathetic trait as well — helps give texture to the relentless shenanigans. Still, as the formula seems to require, the “Goes Wrong” shows often get near and sometimes cross the line at which violence and mockery cease to be funny. That line moves over time, of course; if stuttering no longer seems amusing, it was a surefire laugh-getter not long ago.

And though it’s always hilarious to see floorboards fly up and smack actors in the face, the professionalization of fake trauma may have outstripped the comedy of it. The difficulty of producing a stunt safely is not, after all, related to the amusement it provides; in fact, the difficulty, when too obvious, can get in the way. “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” directed by Adam Meggido, too often belabors the horseplay, making it feel mechanical.

Milder but more endearing are the jokes that depend on miscues, amateur acting and erratic stagecraft. The chair that is meant to deliver the narrator (Harris) to and from the stage sometimes jerks him too suddenly into position and other times makes an excruciatingly slow exit. Harris, who will appear at most performances through April 30, is expert at consternation that turns into helplessness.

And Dennis, the young Cornley actor playing John Darling and Mr. Smee, “who doesn’t know a single line,” must have his words provided through headphones; he repeats them verbatim, even when they’re clearly not meant to be spoken. “Dennis, you’re wearing the wrong costume,” he declaims proudly. “No, don’t say that, that is obviously not a line.”

In such moments, “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” begins to achieve the dizzying liftoff of the best backstage farces, like Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off.” In the confusing atmosphere where real life, the play and the play within the play meet, you feel unmoored from the customary gravity of the theater. Words make very little sense, especially when, as happens blissfully once or twice, the dialogue slips out of alignment and one actor jumps ahead while another stays behind. (That also happened in “The Play That Goes Wrong.”) And when Mrs. Darling and her maid are declared to be “different in every way” though they are quite obviously played by the same flustered actor, disbelief is more than suspended. Wonderfully, it’s shattered.

Alas, the reprieve from the weight of meaning is only temporary. Too often, the belaboring rebounds and you crash back to earth as ungracefully as Peter Pan. Several bits depend on a setup too outlandish even for farce, which works best when the conditions are real but the responses extreme, instead of the other way around. When sound cues are somehow switched with recordings of offstage conversations and even audition tapes, it’s too far-fetched to amuse.

Still, the cast makes even the dimmest jokes shine; you admire the polish. The play’s three authors, once drama school chums, have given themselves the best roles. Henry Shields, the choleric, John Cleese-like one, plays Mr. Darling and Captain Hook; Henry Lewis, the haunted teddy bear, is naturally Nana; and Jonathan Sayer is the headphoned idiot who barely belongs on a stage.

They have all by now honed their shticks into weapons. “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” has been playing off and on since 2013, and the “Goes Wrong” brand has been incorporated as Mischief Worldwide. Perhaps that growth has now begun to drain some joy from the franchise, which is built not just on endangering amateurs but on loving them and even to some extent being them. Death may be a big adventure, but for bumblers, which is to say all of us, unvarnished life is adventure enough.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Through July 9 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, Manhattan; pangoeswrongbway.com. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes.