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[0:00] Chris Lanceley: Hello and welcome back to the Mischief Makers podcast. We're celebrating the nine and a bit years of The Play That Goes Wrong here in New York City. I'm the host, Chris Lanceley, and with me today I have Mark Evans and Alex Mandell.

[0:22] Chris Lanceley: Mark is the replacement, or was the replacement, Chris Bean, replacing Henry Shields in the Broadway company, and Alex was the replacement, Max, replacing Dave Hearn.

[0:38] Mark Evans: That's the one and only.

[0:40] Chris Lanceley: The one and only Dave Hearn. And Mark also associate directs the off-Broadway company.

[0:45] Mark Evans: Sure do.

[0:46] Chris Lanceley: And Alex swings into the off-Broadway company.

[0:49] Alex Mandell: Sure do, frequently.

[0:50] Mark Evans: And my body has lived to tell the tale.

[0:54] Chris Lanceley: Just about.

[0:55] Mark Evans: Just about, barely. So both of you have been pretty much with the nine and a bit year journey from the beginning, essentially.

[1:01] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I mean, I rushed during previews. I'd heard about it being brilliant in the West End and when it came over here. Yeah, I sat outside before 10 a.m. waiting for a rush ticket to see it, so I've definitely seen it and then been a part of it since it very first arrived here.

[1:19] Chris Lanceley: And you're seeing it a lot more now.

[1:21] Alex Mandell: Yeah, you certainly are.

[1:22] Mark Evans: I saw it back in the West End originally. I was in the West End working on another Kevin McCullum play called Hand to God for a couple weeks, and they were like, you know, it was the same producers, I believe, over there as well, who was working on Hand to God as The Play That Goes Wrong, and they said, we can get you a ticket to our other show, and I knew nothing about it. I was like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's check it out.

[1:48] Mark Evans: And I just remember the feeling of, I'm sure everyone's saying this, but the feeling of my stomach hurting from laughing so hard and so long.

[1:58] Alex Mandell: Most people have negative things to say about the show, actually. It's been a difficult journey so far.

[2:03] Mark Evans: Only when you're in it.

[2:06] Alex Mandell: We had great response, Chris.

[2:08] Mark Evans: Yeah, right.

[2:09] Chris Lanceley: That's really great to hear from the associate director.

[2:10] Mark Evans: After seven years.

[2:14] Chris Lanceley: Yeah, you're so-so.

[2:17] Chris Lanceley: Do you remember your auditions for the show?

[2:19] Alex Mandell: Oh, yeah.

[2:21] Mark Evans: Yeah, I do too.

[2:22] Chris Lanceley: You go first.

[2:23] Alex Mandell: Well, I just remember, I mostly remember having a really hard time getting an audition.

[2:28] Mark Evans: Really?

[2:29] Alex Mandell: Yeah, for whatever reason, I could not get seen.

[2:31] Mark Evans: Your reputation?

[2:32] Alex Mandell: Maybe it was my reputation. It's quite possible. That would explain some things now, actually. But I just couldn't, I wouldn't, I had gone to Lambda. I did a semester at Lambda, so I sort of knew the Mischief folks peripherally.

[2:48] Alex Mandell: We sort of played a game called Nine Square together over lunch. And that was like the extent of our friendship. So like Greg Tannehill and I sort of knew each other a little. And I had just seen them around, but we didn't really know each other. But regardless, I couldn't get an audition.

[3:05] Alex Mandell: And then my agents pushed and pushed because I pushed them. And to their credit, they got me in. And I remember it being extremely nerve-wracking and extremely exciting.

[3:17] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[3:17] Alex Mandell: Was that your experience?

[3:19] Mark Evans: Yeah, I remember it was actually, I was doing a concert at Town Hall, and I happened to be doing a job where I had a mustache at the time. And at the dinner afterwards, Jamie DeRoy, who is one of the investors for the show, she happened to be there and she was like, you should be in The Play That Goes Wrong. I was like, just because I have a mustache.

[3:37] Mark Evans: And I didn't know they were auditioning at the time. I don't know whether it was coincidence or whether it was because of her. But like a couple of days later, I had an appointment. And yeah, I initially went in and did like the opening speech. And it was Dave Hearn and Charlie Russell who were there.

[3:53] Mark Evans: And I was just like, you guys are so awesome. If nothing else happens to this, I'm just so glad I got to see you in person and tell you how much I enjoyed the show. And they were so warm. And especially now as the associate director leading the auditions, I sort of remember that experience and try and honor that when I'm leading the room now and just make it so comfortable.

[4:14] Mark Evans: But yeah, so we had, I think there was like one or two initial auditions. Then we had the group auditions, didn't we?

[4:21] Alex Mandell: That was intimidating.

[4:22] Mark Evans: Thinking like, oh, I had convinced myself ahead of time that everyone was going to be so much better than me. And it's really interesting sitting in the waiting room. I'm like, oh my God, they're all going to be amazing. And then when you go in and you realize no one has a clue what they're doing, really, and that was really part of...

[4:37] Alex Mandell: That's an asset.

[4:38] Mark Evans: Yeah. Well, it's part of what they needed to explore to see how comfortable you were going to be in the discomfort of it all. And yeah, it was, we did a lot of improv games and then we're taught like the loop section, that sort of stuff. And then we had a final callback at the Lyceum Theater.

[4:57] Alex Mandell: Were you there that day?

[4:58] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[4:59] Alex Mandell: Wow, I forgot.

[5:00] Mark Evans: We were waiting downstairs in the basement of the Lyceum and it really helps auditioning on stage. I feel like every show should do that because it just helps you be in the world, helps them see you in the world too.

[5:11] Mark Evans: But I really think that one of the things that got me the job of Chris Bean is that I accidentally, during the scene, the line mishap, I accidentally tripped over the rug and like responded in such an aggressive way that they all laughed and they're like, oh, he's Chris Bean.

[5:24] Alex Mandell: Yeah, perfect.

[5:25] Mark Evans: It was a genuine response, just to be clear.

[5:28] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[5:29] Mark Evans: You're just genuinely...

[5:30] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I'm just him.

[5:31] Mark Evans: You're just him.

[5:32] Alex Mandell: Yeah, fair enough.

[5:33] Chris Lanceley: Did you feel a lot of pressure going in to replace the people you replaced?

[5:37] Mark Evans: Immense. Immense pressure. I think they felt it too. It was like, it felt like a real gamble. You know, everything on Broadway is so high stakes. There's so much money involved in it and the original company coming over, that was such an exciting thing. And then to do a full cast replacement for a Broadway play with no names in it, it was a real risk.

[6:01] Alex Mandell: But then it seemed to just really work.

[6:04] Mark Evans: Yeah, it was sort of, I remember Kevin talking about it like an experiment of sorts, right? This is the first thing that they brought over from this company and what American audiences take to it. And I think by the time they were auditioning us, they sort of knew that they had something, obviously. They wanted to keep the show running. But yeah, there was pressure on both sides.

[6:21] Mark Evans: But there was, I mean, we had the great fortune of learning the show from the original artifact, you know? Like the people who created these roles for themselves. And that was a gift that felt like a curse in the beginning for us, I think.

[6:39] Alex Mandell: I very much, because we only had three weeks for all 12 of us to learn this show. It was nice that we were learning it together, three weeks. And that was three weeks of afternoons, really, because in the mornings we didn't have access to the set. So we were like doing, pretending our hands were fish and stuff, remember?

[6:56] Mark Evans: I do.

[6:57] Alex Mandell: Yes. But yeah, I remember, I think, I just speak for myself. I think I basically copied Henry Shields' performance until I felt like, okay, I can survive the show. Let me find out who the essence of Chris Bean is for me.

[7:08] Mark Evans: Right.

[7:09] Alex Mandell: And I'm grateful for that because he was brilliant when he just stole loads of his bits.

[7:13] Mark Evans: Yeah, that helps.

[7:15] Chris Lanceley: It's interesting you call it a blessing and a curse. Did you feel, I mean, I imagine that the blessing is that you get to learn from these people. The curse is the pressure associated with their performances being kind of iconic at that point. Did you, were you given that freedom to kind of, was that something that was spoken that you could create your own kind of entity with it?

[7:37] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[7:38] Alex Mandell: Or were you in the pressure to emulate what they had done?

[7:40] Mark Evans: I think in theory, they were all saying, yeah, you should make it your own. But then understandably, then they were like, oh, but rhythmically it should, the line reading should be this. Because that's what we knew. We have years of experience with this joke in particular. We know this is how it works best.

[7:55] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[7:55] Mark Evans: And I was happy to learn that way too. I mean, I think I watched more than a lot of our cast mates did. At a certain point, people stopped watching the show basically and just sort of tried to make them, you know, absorb the information in a different way. But my way in was similar to Mark's. I just wanted to, just to get through it in the beginning, to copy everything Dave Hearn was doing.

[8:19] Alex Mandell: So my Max is very much molded on Dave Hearn in that way.

[8:25] Mark Evans: But yeah, I do remember them being really, I think the general thought was as soon as we start to get comfortable, we start to feel, we get through the show. We know the mechanics of the show. We know what works, what doesn't. We can sort of fill out the molds in our own way.

[8:42] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[8:42] Mark Evans: And that was the natural progression, I think. I think it's so easy to see the show in its sort of format. And everybody, we all learned based on what we saw our predecessors doing. And then after maybe a week or two, we actually started listening to each other more, seeing each other more, paying attention to each other and then becoming like a team ourselves as opposed to a group of eight individuals telling their own version of the story. We started telling our story and that then elevated it for us for sure.

[9:13] Alex Mandell: And that's one thing I love about the show is that people come and go and change all the time.

[9:17] Mark Evans: Yeah, and there's understudies on a lot.

[9:19] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[9:20] Mark Evans: Together. The opening night, it's opening night every performance and the opening night cast are the people who are on stage with you that night.

[9:26] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[9:26] Mark Evans: And you have to pay attention to that and how different it is.

[9:29] Alex Mandell: I have to give credit to Ned Noise because he was one of our understudies in the replacement cast on Broadway. And I never got to see his Max because why would I? It was so much better than yours.

[9:41] Mark Evans: It was transcendent.

[9:44] Alex Mandell: I've heard.

[9:46] Mark Evans: But I've heard that it's completely different from mine. And I think that what he did to sort of make the role his own in stepping into a role that had been so clearly defined by Dave Hearn and then sort of emulated by me, to like have the wherewithal and the presence of mind to sort of know yourself and know what you bring to the table. And he really did the Ned Noise version of the show, you know.

[10:15] Alex Mandell: Which is also a testament to the writing that like if you tell the truth with it, it works regardless of who is playing the roles.

[10:21] Mark Evans: Yeah, it can hold a lot.

[10:22] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I do. I also think it's worth mentioning that Max is a particularly tricky role as you're learning it because so much of it is in relationship with the audience. So until you have an audience, it's really hard. And he is, I remember someone at stage door one night saying like, oh, do you know who my favorite was? The funny one. And I was like, all of us. Thanks.

[10:42] Mark Evans: But like he is considered he's the most likable, the most lovable. And with that comes this responsibility of like until you've had an audience, Sam Douglas had the same thing. He was playing it off-Broadway now brilliantly. It was like, you have to sit in that vulnerability of like, I just have to go out there and do it with an audience. And then once you do those like nonsense and see, oh, they are, they are responding. It's kind of baked into it.

[11:06] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[11:08] Alex Mandell: Then the fun starts to happen. But like for out of all the characters, Max is trickiest to play, I think. And act one, Jonathan as well. I remember when I was learning Jonathan, that's tricky because you spent so much time just standing there and you're told by the directors, you'll just be able to feel it off the audience. When is the time to exit?

[11:28] Mark Evans: You just can't know what that is until...

[11:28] Alex Mandell: You also have to be prepared to just fail.

[11:31] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[11:31] Alex Mandell: You're like, okay, I'm going to go out there. And if it bombs, there's plenty of other stuff that I do that I know will work. So you have to be courageous with that.

[11:37] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[11:38] Alex Mandell: That's a lot of trust.

[11:38] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[11:39] Chris Lanceley: It's funny you mentioned the funny one. I was leaving the theater with Brent who plays Robert and Sam. And I think Leanna was there who plays Sandra. Sam is Max. And we were walking past some people who had seen the show and we think, okay, they're stage dooring. They want signatures on their playbills. And they just singled out Sam.

[12:02] Mark Evans: That's what I mean.

[12:03] Alex Mandell: And pulled him towards like, you were brilliant. You were so good. Absolutely brilliant. Absolutely amazing. They're like, can you take a picture of us?

[12:12] Mark Evans: Yeah, that was essentially it. The three others just walked away when we went home.

[12:17] Alex Mandell: While Sam stayed behind.

[12:24] Alex Mandell: Like a formative moment of you as a replacement company, did you find that some relationships formed more quickly than others? Like Bean's relationship with Max between the two of you perhaps or Robert and Bean spend so much time together on stage in specific moments?

[12:42] Mark Evans: Yeah, I don't know with regards to characters. We shared a dressing room, Alex and I, which he was not happy about at first. He thought I was going to be a...

[12:49] Alex Mandell: Ready to bleep, Alan?

[12:50] Mark Evans: An asshole.

[12:51] Alex Mandell: I...

[12:52] Mark Evans: Thank you.

[12:53] Alex Mandell: There it is.

[12:54] Mark Evans: That's perfect timing if it goes wrong.

[12:55] Alex Mandell: That actually is. Are you free?

[12:58] Mark Evans: Are you available?

[12:59] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I don't know. I thought... I was like, oh, here's this pretentious British guy and we're not... And then I found out we're sharing a room together and I was like, oh, my God, of course. Are you kidding me? And he's coming to my wedding in a few weeks. Yeah, that worked out for us. I don't know that the characters necessarily made a difference, though, because the nature of the rehearsal process, as led by Mark Bell and Maddie, was very... Was designed to be very collaborative. It really felt like a clown class in a way.

[13:36] Mark Evans: Right. And, you know, which was helpful in some ways. And we really didn't get to the meat of the script until about a weekend, probably. We basically run out of time in learning the show. And the last few days was pretty frantically making sure that we could survive it.

[13:53] Alex Mandell: Do it. But it was helpful. I just wish we would have had more time because all of the stuff that we were doing, we did a lot of improv exercises. We did a lot of exploring what it means to be in that. I'm sure any performers, any actors who are listening, have all felt that moment where you go to the white room and you've forgotten your lines. And it's like time just seems to just slow down. You're like, oh, God. And we did a lot of work sort of embracing that. We call it the bead.

[14:18] Mark Evans: Yeah. It's like a little pit in the stomach just hits. And so we would basically deliberately be put in uncomfortable situations. We had to do like interviews for jobs. We didn't even know what the jobs were. And he'd be asking us to do exploring skill sets. And it was really funny. And I think we trauma bonded in that and not in a dramatic way, but like in an essential way for us to all be like, ah, yeah, we are a group of people who really are learning what it means to be in this style of a comedy. And really just establishing trust with each other, which was essential for this play in particular. And then the trust with the audience for me came weeks after I started in the role. I mean, it took a long time for me to actually settle in and really feel what the role is and what the show is and how little you have to do in some moments and really just trust that the audience is there with you. And all you have to do is sort of like bring them along.

[15:16] Alex Mandell: You know, that's interesting with Max in particular. Did you find that when you started like subbing in off Broadway, that that relationship shifted with the audience just because of the size of the house and that sort of thing?

[15:27] Mark Evans: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it was it's really the same relationship, but it's just a different scope. The room sounds different. The feedback is different. You can be a lot smaller because there's they're closer and there are fewer of them. So they can catch a subtler movements, I guess.

[15:44] Alex Mandell: Yeah, the Lyceum is like for the show.

[15:46] Mark Evans: That's my strong suit.

[15:47] Alex Mandell: Yeah, the Lyceum was like 960 seats, I think, over three levels of balcony. So he used to go up there in the pre-show. Gosh, this is really steep. And it was kind of like as far as trying to sell the idea that this troop of amateur actors have come over to Broadway and here they are in the like oldest continuously operating theater on Broadway, they're feeling really grand and like, yeah, this is, you know, it's a lot to fill the space. But then New World Stages feels more appropriate for it. I think you can kind of believe that they've scraped the money together to get to that smaller house.

[16:26] Mark Evans: Yeah. I've done the show on tour as well as off Broadway. Like 2000 seated theaters. With microphones.

[16:33] Alex Mandell: Yeah, with microphones.

[16:34] Mark Evans: What a concept.

[16:35] Alex Mandell: You didn't have microphones at the Lyceum?

[16:36] Mark Evans: No.

[16:37] Alex Mandell: Was that challenging?

[16:38] Mark Evans: We had technique.

[16:39] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[16:40] Mark Evans: Okay.

[16:41] Alex Mandell: Okay, what is that?

[16:43] Mark Evans: They don't teach it anymore.

[16:44] Alex Mandell: No.

[16:45] Mark Evans: Yeah, I think there was one basically like a... We had a couple of floor mics, I think, right? We had floor mics and one was maybe like hanging and there were backstage mics as well to pick up some stuff. But we were screaming.

[16:56] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[16:57] Mark Evans: I mean, I just remember like literally screaming for two and a half hours.

[17:00] Alex Mandell: Yeah. Alex showed me some footage that he found somewhere and I was like, talking like this the whole time.

[17:05] Mark Evans: Singing that whole show. Like singing it from a health standpoint to just make sure that we weren't pushing. But I'm like, I sound like an alto. Just belting.

[17:14] Alex Mandell: Yeah. It all. And then I forgot you walked up to the balcony every night. I wonder how many steps you did. And did you do this on tour too in these big houses?

[17:22] Mark Evans: I always go up to the back. I love going up to the back. And then Trevor would give his speech and I'd be like, do you know any... You probably can't hear that from the cheap seats. Let me fill you in. I used to love it.

[17:31] Alex Mandell: This is a fun story. So on our opening night...

[17:33] Mark Evans: Which one?

[17:35] Alex Mandell: Every night.

[17:36] Mark Evans: Very good. The Play That Goes Wrong was my Broadway debut. And it was like, it meant the world. And it was so cool to do the Chris Bean opening speech welcoming people to my play. And it was so meta.

[17:51] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[17:52] Mark Evans: And I was anxious about the pre-show because obviously there was no way for us to rehearse that during rehearsal. So for Chris, you just go out there and welcome people wearing this tuxedo. And there was a thing that we commonly did at the Lyceum where if there were any holes in the front row or a few rows, I would be given a couple of pairs of tickets from box office, from Heidi, the amazing house manager. And I'd go up to the balcony and pick a couple of people and just say, come with me. And I'd bring them down. And it was always such a treat for them.

[18:24] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[18:25] Mark Evans: On my opening night where I was feeling anxious, I went up to the balcony and I had no idea that one of my closest friends, Chris O'Neill, who I saw opposite in Book of Mormon, had bought a balcony ticket, come to watch my Broadway debut without telling me. And I walked up there and I saw him and it just made me feel so happy. I was like, good evening. And he was like, what the? I was like, is this your wife? And I think she was like 17, the girl sitting next to him. He was like, no. I was like, come with me, both of you. And I brought him all the way down to the orchestra level and I could hear him laughing throughout. And it was like he was my emotional support animal just getting me through it.

[19:02] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[19:03] Mark Evans: And this random 17-year-old girl.

[19:04] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[19:05] Mark Evans: He like stripped up her family.

[19:06] Alex Mandell: No, she was just there alone.

[19:07] Mark Evans: But yeah, that was so cool. I used to love doing that. Just upgrading people.

[19:11] Alex Mandell: Did you do that out in the world?

[19:15] Mark Evans: We did for a long time, but there were often like seats in row K or something.

[19:20] Alex Mandell: Right.

[19:21] Mark Evans: People like, no, I'll stay here.

[19:23] Alex Mandell: Yeah. Well, I used to go up to people in row L and make a big deal about them being upgraded and then just they move. I hand them tickets, walk off, and then they look at them.

[19:32] Mark Evans: One row forward.

[19:33] Alex Mandell: That's so dumb.

[19:34] Mark Evans: So stupid. I'm like, what else am I doing with these?

[19:37] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I wish we still did that.

[19:39] Mark Evans: It's challenging in a smaller house, I suppose.

[19:42] Alex Mandell: So, Mark, your relationship changed with the show when Broadway closed and you moved off Broadway as an associate director.

[19:51] Mark Evans: Well, Matt DiCarlo became the production director and that all happened pretty last minute. I think the transition to the decision to move it to New World Stages and the actual doing of it was pretty frantic and last minute. And so I said to Matty, let me know if I can help in any way. And the two of us got along. We all got along so well with Matty during because he was the production stage manager for us. And he just said, yeah, actually, I do. I need someone to assist. And I said, OK, I'll do it. And so I was kind of there as assistance director and fight coordinator on a three week contract just to be there to help put it up during rehearsal because we also didn't know how we would work together in that capacity.

[20:40] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[20:41] Mark Evans: And that was when was that? I think 2019.

[20:44] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[20:45] Mark Evans: Seven years ago. And yeah, I just stayed on as the associate and it's been an absolute blessing. It took me a while to trust my sort of that I deserved to be in that position. It's quite a tricky thing, especially because we just I just finished playing the role. Bless Matt Harrington, who was Chris off Broadway. It was like he was so considerate and respectful. And I was clearly trying to be, too, to just let him find his own Chris. But yeah, there's been a couple of times where the show has needed coverage and I have like made a conscious decision not to volunteer to go into it because it's an important distinction to be able to be like, no, I took a while for me to feel like I have the respect in this in this position.

And it's just a very different brain space that I occupy now. I'm about to go from here to do rehearsals, ironically, with the new Chris Bean that's coming in. And I basically just jump around like a fool playing all of the other roles around him. And I'm so I'm very much sort of like an eighth of like of me is in each character now, as opposed to just predominantly knowing that role. And it was so cool to have the responsibility of learning what everybody else did in the show. And it just gave me so much more perspective and respect for what we were all doing on Broadway. Every role is so unique and challenging.

[22:11] Alex Mandell: Yeah, it's really cool. I'm so grateful for it. It keeps me busy, too.

[22:15] Mark Evans: Yeah. It's always nice.

[22:17] Chris Lanceley: We're going to talk more about the transitions for both of you to the Off-Broadway Company. But we have to take a quick break. Before we do that, I have a mischievous question.

[22:26] Mark Evans: Gosh.

[22:27] Chris Lanceley: Doing this with everyone, everyone gets a mischievous question. It's kind of the same question to each of you. It's like 6 p.m. Performance is at 7. You're not in the show that night, or at least you think you're not, until you get a text message from the stage manager. I mean, I know you said that you will not go in and perform, but...

[22:44] Alex Mandell: Oh, yes and this.

[22:45] Chris Lanceley: Keep going, Chris.

[22:46] Alex Mandell: Yes.

[22:47] Chris Lanceley: Well, yes and. You know improv.

[22:50] Mark Evans: What a pro.

[22:51] Chris Lanceley: And you get a text message from the stage manager. We need you to fill in tonight. Not Chris Bean. Give me a call when you can. I mean, I know you said that you will not go in and perform, but...

[23:01] Alex Mandell: Who are you hoping you're filling in?

[23:04] Alex Mandell: Sandra.

[23:05] Mark Evans: Without any doubt. Anytime I get to play Sandra.

[23:08] Alex Mandell: You had your answer before I finished the question.

[23:10] Mark Evans: I kind of knew where you were going. I'm like, give me that red dress now.

[23:14] Chris Lanceley: That, by the way, is Matt DeCarlo's answer as well, coincidentally.

[23:16] Mark Evans: Sandra.

[23:17] Alex Mandell: Yeah, I can shake for him there. Hashtag gay.

[23:19] Mark Evans: I know mine. It's very clear to me. And it's for one reason only.

[23:25] Alex Mandell: Yes.

[23:26] Mark Evans: Jonathan.

[23:27] Alex Mandell: For the truss swing.

[23:28] Mark Evans: Yes, for the truss swing. It is very fun. I've always wanted to do the truss swing. And they won't let me.

[23:34] Alex Mandell: Who says I don't play that role?

[23:36] Mark Evans: The powers that be.

[23:38] Alex Mandell: See, he pointed at Mark.

[23:40] Mark Evans: Yes.

[23:41] Alex Mandell: This is a visual medium, right?

[23:43] Mark Evans: I mean, it could be.

[23:45] Alex Mandell: No, they won't. I mean, the Jonathans go through, I mean, you can speak to this.

[23:50] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[23:51] Alex Mandell: Which the people might be interested to know. Sort of the training that you have to go through to pull off the truss swing stunt at the end of the show.

[23:58] Mark Evans: Yeah. Which might be a spoiler. I don't know.

[24:00] Alex Mandell: No.

[24:01] Mark Evans: Guess what? The show goes wrong.

[24:03] Alex Mandell: If you weren't aware.

[24:05] Mark Evans: I think most people who are listening to this will probably be fairly familiar. At least once.

[24:08] Alex Mandell: Yeah, at least once. And if not, go.

[24:10] Mark Evans: But yeah, the Jonathans do trapeze training during the first week of rehearsal.

[24:15] Alex Mandell: I remember it.

[24:16] Mark Evans: It was just me and you during my first week. I don't know why it was just you and I and not the rest of us.

[24:21] Alex Mandell: Because I needed to do it too.

[24:22] Mark Evans: I'd never done it. I was in so much pain after that.

[24:26] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[24:27] Mark Evans: Yeah. It's challenging. Jonathan especially as a role. Like Jonathan and Robert, but particularly Jonathan. The role off of the platform. There's a lot of core engagement that you have to do.

[24:36] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[24:37] Mark Evans: And you very quickly develop the stamina for it and the strength. But it is a shock to the system at first.

[24:49] Mark Evans: Ipec Minor and ended up missing a bunch of previews. Came back for opening night though. Did set me back, but I got there eventually. It's a real workout, Jonathan. Your body changes a lot. Because he's sort of, he's on for the beginning and then he's gone for a lot of the middle and then he's back. But on the moments he's on, he's flailing about. Yeah, he's on. It's a lot of physical stuff. And then you basically carry all of the exposition for the show in the last 10 minutes. So I remember Clyde Voetje, who played it a couple of years ago, was saying that, like, he used to have to do a second vocal warmup at the beginning of act two, because he'd been quiet the whole time. Yeah, and so did I. But it's hard in New World Stages because there's no way to do it. The Brazilian bubble show is like, what is that noise? Who is that yelling?

[25:35] Chris Lanceley: We're going to take a quick break. We'll see you soon.

[25:40] Chris Lanceley: The Play That Goes Wrong is the award-winning hilarious comedy. Huffington Post calls it tons of fun for all ages. The funniest play Broadway has ever seen. It's a historical, I mean, hysterical hybrid of Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes, where everything that can go wrong does. According to Forbes magazine, you'll never have a better time in a theatre. The Play That Goes Wrong is right for the whole family. Get tickets at broadwaygoeswrong.com.

[26:12] Chris Lanceley: All right. Welcome back, everyone. Um, I'm here with Alex Mandell and Mark Evans. Still, they didn't leave during the break, which is nice. Really good. This is what we were doing. I'm going to stay a few minutes extra, actually. Yeah. Good. Do you have anything after this? You're free, right? Wonderful. Um, so just, just before the break, we started talking about, um, transitioning from, uh, your experiences on Broadway to off Broadway. Alex, I mean, it took a while for you to be called in, right? To play Max. Were you expecting that at some point?

[26:52] Alex Mandell: No, not at all. I knew that, I guess it was always a possibility, but no, I was never expecting it. I sort of felt like I had sort of ended my journey with the show and was happy about that and close that chapter. And, um, yeah, I think it took a while for everybody to sort of accept that, oh, this is just an open ended commercial hit. Right now, when we joined the show on Broadway, I can only speak for me, but I think it was pretty universal. We were on six months contracts, but we were like, this is a risk. If we get eight to 12 weeks out of this, that'll be great. And we just kept extending. They even announced that we were closing in August and then there was, they decided, cause there was a Tracy Letts play going into, um, the Lyceum and then clearly something changed and they were like, actually, we're going to extend again from that August to January. So there was a massive billboard of all of our faces in, do you remember in Times Square, there was like the closing that goes wrong or something.

[27:51] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[27:52] Alex Mandell: Um, leave it to Kevin to spin it into a brilliant argument. I remember Kevin saying like, one of the things with the marketing is that like, we don't just use marketing that tells people that the show is funny. The marketing itself has to be funny, which is why all the posters are upside down, all of that stuff. It's just so, so smart. But yeah, when it moved, we were all asked if we wanted to move off Broadway with it, to be in it. And I think only Ashley Reyes, who was an understudy on Broadway, took over Sandra and Adam Daveline, who was one of the understudies, um, moved to be an understudy temporarily off Broadway. Um, and so we had all made the decision, no, we are not going to continue with it.

And we assumed that it would maybe run a few months off Broadway. So then when it started extending and like, it's really great for us now that there's this whole Rolodex of people who know the show over the last almost 10 years, because we can invite them back when we need them. But yeah, it took a while for us to realize that like, Oh, there's probably going to be a time where everyone will be invited back because Alex, Alex also did like an amazing sort of like, we call it like RuPaul's drag race, all stars version of the plane that goes wrong. That was in DC. It was like the avengers, like people who have done different productions, either the tour or Broadway off Broadway. And a couple of new people at the Kennedy center in DC for three weeks. That was a really fun group.

[29:09] Mark Evans: Yeah. And I had just broken my wrist right before that.

[29:13] Alex Mandell: Yes. Thank you. Broadway softball. Yeah. We were not a good team, by the way. I don't think we won a single game. We were terrible. The team that goes wrong. We were terrible. The only person who was worth their salt was Trevor's roommate who wasn't even affiliated with the show at all. And he was just our ringer who we would bring in and he was amazing. But, uh, yeah, I, I dove for a fly ball and left field. Caught it good, broke the wrist, landed on my wrist, snapped it backwards. And the show was in DC was in six weeks. And I was, I mean, I had, I had done the show obviously at this point. Um, but I'm from the DC area. This very much felt like doing the show on my home turf in a way. Um, and, uh, so I was super excited and then super not excited.

[30:00] Mark Evans: Yeah. We were gutted when we heard that cause we were like, oh my gosh, is Alex not going to be able to do this. And then it felt risky as well, because until you start exploring the doing of the things, you can't really tell whether you can do it or not. And you were confident. You were like, I'll be able to do it. I'll heal enough. And I think we only needed to make two minor adjustments. We moved a handle on one of the bits of furniture that you needed to move, but like you did a brilliant job at navigating that.

[30:25] Alex Mandell: Yeah. I mean, it was, uh, shout out to HSS. I had a great doctor and I was like showing him clips of the show. And I was like, so I need to lift a grandfather clock with someone inside of it. Um, and he was like, okay. And he was very game to sort of walk through everything and the mechanics. We, we worked it out. I wore a little brace, but, um, it happened. Yeah. But yeah, no, I was, I was not expecting that call. Was DC first?

[30:50] Mark Evans: No, no, DC had already been off. I had been off Broadway. A couple of these things, but it's okay. It's all a blur. So many people come in and out over the years. You've also done multiple versions of it and multiple characters.

[31:02] Alex Mandell: You've done three, three different roles, right?

[31:06] Mark Evans: Yeah. I was Jonathan to begin with. I I'm, I've been Robert over the holidays twice. I've done about 200 Roberts, probably about 800, uh, Jonathan's and about a thousand beans probably. And how long were you on the tour?

[31:17] Alex Mandell: Tour was about nine months. I'd say whole different experience. I was like we said, Mike and in front of two, 3000 people, different cities, different, different, uh, the audience has shifted depending on where we were in the nation, improv stuff, improv stuff.

[31:32] Mark Evans: Yeah. I love doing the ledger section in front of, you know, different, different cities bashing their sports teams.

[31:40] Chris Lanceley: How much did that shift?

[31:42] Mark Evans: I would go to the, uh, the locals, the locals on the crew at each city and talk to them about what would really upset, you know, like when we're in Reno, Nevada, you can't say Nevada. Uh, otherwise that gets the audience going. So of course I did.

[31:59] Chris Lanceley: That's great. Was that fun or stressful for you?

[32:02] Mark Evans: I mean, I guess at that point it was a little stressful, especially when there was a really complicated thing that would upset or something that I didn't understand. There was something in Florida about hanging chads, I think it was West Palm beach or something to do with, I mean, the election, which I didn't fully understand. I just had to kind of trust that it would be funny for everybody. They would understand that reference.

[32:22] Alex Mandell: Yeah.

[32:22] Mark Evans: Yeah. So that was scary. I remember being in Memphis where they have the, uh, the duck, um, they have a hotel where the ducks come down and I was the duck master, ceremonial duck master as Chris Bean for a show. I remember yelling at them. If you ever led five ducks to a fountain, is that going to be funny? I have no idea. It was funny. They loved it.

[32:42] Alex Mandell: Thank you. Great. Um, also kind of challenging wrangling five ducks to a fountain.

[32:47] Mark Evans: I would imagine. That's how it feels as the associate director. I really like how you got it back on topic. Speak to that.

[32:58] Alex Mandell: What being the associate director and wrangler.

[32:59] Mark Evans: Yeah. Feeling like that. I mean, as, as you are currently bringing my replacement, David McAwee into the show and you're dealing with injuries of people and injury leaves and that sort of thing, or vacations, that's what I imagine is challenging.

[33:16] Alex Mandell: Yeah. It's the, the continuous attempt to keep the show as consistent as possible for all involved, including the audiences. Um, but when you're up against, you know, ins and outs and just schedule conflicts and it's just a constant, as an actor myself, it's been really, really helpful to sort of have the responsibility of managing a show because you, what is required of us as actors is so deeply personal and it's so high stakes and you have to pull from, you have to conjure it up from the depth of your soul sometimes to get through eight shows a week. And so it is deeply personal and all consuming. And then when you're on the other side, you, you very quickly see that like, Oh, there's nothing personal in it at all.

If someone is like, I'm really not sure if I can get through the show tonight and they are stressed about it. There's really no, there's like, great. So call out, give us the information we need and we will find a way to make the show happen. Right. And it's literally just management and making sure that we manage things logistically. So it takes away the preciousness of it. And one of my responsibilities I feel is finding effective ways to communicate that with the actors so that they feel taken care of and that they trust that like they are essential to the operation of the show, but also that like it can operate without them too. So they shouldn't feel this weight of like the world that like, Oh my God, I have to carry this. Cause I, I definitely felt that responsibility when I was in it.

[34:47] Mark Evans: Yeah.

[34:48] Alex Mandell: Um, that's the only thing that I feel like if I was to go back into the show now, I would be kinder to myself. I think with regards to my responsibility, it's like, I'm going to go out there. I'm going to do my best job and then I'm going to like happily leave it at the stage door and go home and live my life.

[35:03] Mark Evans: Yeah. These are, I think these are the kinds of things you learn on a long run. There's things that I've had to learn over the last seven years, you know, that I used to be that when I'm playing Chris Bean, that if Brent is out playing Robert already and I wasn't feeling great, you know, I'd feel a responsibility to, to push through because you know, if Robert and Bean are out, it's even more challenging for everybody. Um, but as time's gone on, it's, it's that it's realizing that the show will continue the people who can come in and play your role, they, they are confident that are great and they will do a wonderful job and you don't have to worry about that or feel a responsibility for keeping the show going. And I think you, you've been great at that. And Maddie and our stage management teams have been great at communicating that people can take the time they need.

[35:44] Alex Mandell: Well, it's, it's a particularly challenging show physically, vocally, emotionally, like to actually authentically exist in that place of panic and fear as if all of this stuff is happening for the first time. It requires a lot of you and we all appreciate and respect that. And so fully just respect. Okay. You need, you need a night off and take the night off. Um, obviously when we're short on coverage, we have to try and figure it out when it's a collaboration in that regard, but there's no exact science to it. And it's, it is continual continuously just a problem solving situation. And I think that's exactly the same for all shows, all commercial, continually sort of like long running shows. It's just a Rubik's cube that you're constantly sort of switching around and making sure that the show can go on.

[36:32] Mark Evans: Yeah. It's an interesting balance to find, to try to strike between keeping the show as consistent as possible for safety really. And because it's such a long running show and it's, it's hopefully we'll continue to, to run, but also to keep it fresh every night. And of course, if you have different people playing different roles on any given night, that, that, that certainly helps with that.

[36:53] Alex Mandell: Yeah. But the, the, something that Maddie really drilled into us as throughout our run on Broadway. And I know he was PSM on, he was PSM on Broadway. Now the now the director, production director, um, and, uh, is, this is, this is opening night. The stakes are high because this is opening night.

[37:13] Chris Lanceley: Every night and so it has to be fresh and it has to at the same time be consistent and we have to know where that person's foot is going to be at that moment. So we don't trip and yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I found challenging going into it initially. And this is what I sort of offered to what I've said to David, who's learning the role of Chris right now. Anyone coming into the show, I say like, it's tricky, because you have to for safety sake, be in anticipation mode, you have to be anticipating what's to come. So when certain scenery is about to fall, you have to know that you're standing in the right place. So then it's trickier to respond authentically to it. But then once you've settled into the show, after a couple of weeks, you can just exist in the here and now, and then be a little bit more surprised as things happen. Yeah, maintaining that surprise as the show.

[37:58] Mark Evans: I mean, you've done it phenomenally well, mate, for the last seven years to see someone be able to deliver the caliber of performance you've been able to do and make it feel as if it is the first time. It is a real, it's a skill set that not a lot of people have. And it is very different to being able to just, you know, do things for the first time and then let it go.

[38:18] Chris Lanceley: I appreciate that. That's important. Yeah, for sure. It's important to me that that happens. A part of doing that for me has been kind of pushing what I think you might find acceptable, like, you know, if I can be a little mischievous and go outside the lines. Yeah. But that's what it is, kind of pushing little things here and there, being pushed back. And even the pushback is like helpful for keeping things exciting and interesting. Sometimes I was talking to Lara and Dora about this, doing the show for seven years. There's times when I get a note and I'm like, two years ago, I was told to do something different. Why is that? And then, you know, over time, I've realized that's because maybe it becomes a bit stale.

Maybe the jigsaw of people around you is different. And that's one of the trickier things as the associate director, too, is because like anything that Matty, the production director, says goes. Yeah. Sometimes I will say something and people don't understand that. It's come from Matty via me or we've had I've had an idea. I run it by him. And so if it feels like it's in direct contradiction to a note that they were given two years ago or even two weeks ago. Yeah. It's like, oh, and they start to mistrust what I'm saying. And there's a little bit of either pushback or just a little glint in the eyes when they're like, oh, you don't believe me or you don't. You're frustrated. Yeah. And I had to make sure that I did not take that personally.

I, one of the things that my therapist taught me about when I was sort of navigating that transition was like, it's not your job for everybody to like you. It's your job for everyone to respect you. And how you get respect is by being really good at your job. Yeah. And so like, just making sure that I was always doing my best to, to deliver what was best for everybody and the show. And if people have differences of opinions around that, I can't control that. And that was really helpful. It was kind of liberating to just let me leave myself alone and do the job.

[40:11] Alex Mandell: Yeah. Well, we, I mean, you, you and Maddie have done, I think, an amazing job of holding space for the show to live and breathe. I mean, it really is. We talked earlier about how the structure is built in such a rigid way that works that's proven, but that the show can hold a lot of different variations of character, different. And it's true. Every time there's a new person in a role, every on any given night, the alchemy of what's happening in the storytelling changes. Right. And so it's really, you can really tell when people are listening and when the show is listening and that's really when it works. Right. I mean, it was born out of improv. And so that's the, that's the seed of what makes improv great.

And so, uh, yeah, I think it's as structured as the show is, the show is a breathing, living thing and it's completely different than it was on Broadway nine years ago. You know what I mean? But it's always informed by telling the truth of the moment, like to, to be sort of Frank, when we're auditioning for the, when we're holding auditions for the show and we see that someone has, cause there's been multiple non-replica regional productions of the show and we see that it's on someone's resume that they played max or they played Chris or Robert more often than not, if not almost all the time, they are pushing it and they are in a comedy. They like, they clearly haven't been, uh, they clearly haven't approached the storytelling in the same way that, you know, the original company and we then have inherited and sort of instill in everybody, which is you're not in a comedy.

Don't try and get the laughs. Max and Annie are slightly different, but you're in a murder mystery. A serious murder mystery play that is going wrong. And part of the rehearsal this week, actually, we did a brush up rehearsal that I was leading and we ran the first full 20 minutes of the show as the play that goes right. So I created this two page long list of what they should do in order for to not do where the coat hook falls off. It's not going to fall off. You're going to actually, the door is going to open. So you're just going to enter. And it actually, I wouldn't say it's a good play, but it is a high stakes murder mystery. It's actually a terrible play. The murder of Havisham Manor. It's very short.

It's very short. But like, it was really, really effective for everyone to experience how slick and, and sort of high stakes and invested everybody could be. Um, so then we immediately ran the goes wrong version of that 20 minute opening scene. And the pain of things going wrong was just so much more apparent and truthful and honest. And I watched the first act that night, cause we'd just been working on an act one on Monday and it was, the audience wouldn't really be able to tell what was different if they'd have seen the day before and that show. And yet it was like so elevated because what we're continually bringing, yes, we can rehearse rhythms and there's a musicality to it. And there's like, yeah, if you emphasize this word, they're going to hear it.

And that'll, so there's a bit of science to the laughter, to the comedy, but mostly it is like, just really do trust that you can tell the truth. Right. It's really thrilling to sort of like explore that to not be the one responsible for doing it on stage and just to watch. And there was a couple of things I said to Sam Douglas, I was like, I misguided you on that. Actually, you need to do actually a bit, include 50% of the irony in there. And I'm like, it's, it's not an exact science. It's really cool to explore that.

[43:39] Chris Lanceley: It's interesting. You talk about the science there. If you both found this, I found that a lot of the comedy, maybe it comes from doing it over and over again, feels like math. It feels mathematical. The timing feels structured like that. I'm thinking about like my favorite moments, like extending the arm with the phone to, to Robert feels like such a wonderful timing moment that I love to play with each night with the audience. What were those for you in doing the show?

[44:05] Mark Evans: I remember feeling on Broadway what, what a gift that we are. I mean, we were really in a masterclass of comedy and especially when we got comfortable and we could actually breathe and listen to each other on stage after the first few weeks of gritting our teeth. Um, I just remember feeling sort of an out of body experience, like a very self aware. I could see the play happening from a bird's eye view and I could also inhabit my body on stage. And I just, just the feeling of like, it feels like chemistry to me. It feels like if I pour a little of the blue vial in for this joke tonight, let's see what kind of, oh, we got 20% more of a laugh on that. And of course, every night's different. Every audience is different.

If the audience doesn't feel they have permission to laugh and they're going to be quieter anyway, even though they may be enjoying it so that, you know, there are a ton of different factors at play. But I remember, I mean, in the nonsense section specifically when, or even Max's versus and first entrance, when he sort of establishes this relationship with the audience that he's breaking the fourth wall, he's able to interact with them and that whatever they do directly impacts him. Right. And so the nonsense is really his first big laugh and his first moment of recognition in that way. And it took me forever to figure out what that was. And I'm still off Broadway changes for me because you know, it's like pouring a little of this vial in this vial. And that was so exciting. That was such a treat.

[45:30] Alex Mandell: Yeah. Yeah. You're getting paid to learn. I was teaching, I have an acting studio here in the city and I was teaching a class last night. Mark Evans Acting Studio. Mark Evans Studio. Thank you very much. Plug. And I was teaching a class last night and said to, um, something to one of the actors. I forget what it was, but she was like, huh, that's really interesting how you can break it down that way. And I immediately thought, oh, I learned that at the play that goes wrong. Yeah. And I've been so fortunate. I think any, any, any time that you get to work and collaborate with people who are working at the top of the game, you just absorb so much. Like I remember thinking that when I graduated college in London, age 20, that I knew everything. Yeah. And you really do just learn so much on the job and the play that goes wrong. And that's why I was disappointed that he was my dressing room. And then I taught him everything he knows. It's true.

[46:18] Mark Evans: But to answer your question, I think a little more clearly, the thing that, that one of the greatest gifts that the show gave to me as a performer is, is not necessarily that I was able, or we were able to sort of dial in particular moments in terms of timing, but that it's the trust and the comfort in knowing that that moment is going to be different every night. And it will only work if you are in the moment and you're listening and you're feeling the audience and you're feeling your partner and feeling your partner. This podcast is brought to you by feeling your partner.

[46:56] Alex Mandell: But it's, you know, you, you get what I'm saying. I'm going to stop talking now.

[46:58] Chris Lanceley: Yeah. And remove your hand from my leg, please.

[47:04] Mark Evans: Yes. Okay.

[47:09] Chris Lanceley: Like, how do we bring it from there to the close? I feel like we just do sound effects for the last hour. Yeah, we just end things. Let me talk like that crazy guy. Alex, Mark, thank you so much for joining today. This was really fun.

[47:22] Mark Evans: It was really fun.

[47:27] Chris Lanceley: The show has been so lucky to have you both with it for all of these years. You know, Alex, you've been such a wonderful Max. We're so excited when, we're so excited when someone gets hurt and you come in. We love seeing you on the schedule. We all wish you were there the whole time. Although not anymore because I won't be there. You know, we can hang out now actually and spend time.

[47:43] Alex Mandell: Yes. We've been meaning to check out that Brazilian stakeouts across the street.

[47:47] Chris Lanceley: We have been meaning to do that. So maybe we do that. Yeah. Lots of meat. Lots of meat.

[47:54] Mark Evans: And Mark, again, thank you. It's been wonderful being directed by you through the years. You were talking about the education this show brings and it has been like a master's and I've learned so much from you and from Matty and for all the people around me. Part of me leaving is feeling like I've completed my masters and I'm ready to try out my skills elsewhere. So thank you both for coming in, talking about your time with the show. Thank you, Mark, for all that time. Alex, all the time we shared on stage together. It's been a pleasure. Congrats on a really, really successful run with the show.

[48:28] Alex Mandell: Thank you. Yeah. It's been amazing. You're so wonderful on the show and everyone should come see you before you leave final in July from July. I don't know when this is coming out. Probably in a week or two from today. Everyone go see Chris Lansley before he leaves. He's fantastic in the show. He has been one of the backbones of the show that has carried it through and made it such a success off Broadway. It's been a pleasure doing the show with you. It's been a pleasure continuing this journey with you, Mark. And as your host of the podcast, I'd like to sign off now. Thank you for listening.

[49:02] Mark Evans: Sorry, I'll let you do your job.

[49:08] Chris Lanceley: No, that was perfect. Do you want to say my name? Do you want to do it in a British accent?

[49:11] Mark Evans: Right. This is Chris Lansley signing off. I made a promise to your mother and father, Michael Caine.

[49:21] Alex Mandell: That's the best your British accent has ever been. I mean, truly, if you've ever seen me in the show.

[49:25] Chris Lanceley: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.