To open the 2024-25 season, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC) welcomes the award-winning comedy, The Play That Goes Wrong. The ongoing original production of the play is the longest-running comedy in London’s West End and in 2015 was awarded Best New Comedy at the prestigious Olivier Awards. MTC’s production is a co-production featuring artists from Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton.
The show focuses on a drama society’s opening night performance of a murder mystery play. The curtains go up and everything, as the title suggests, goes wrong. Nonetheless — as all thespians know — the show must go on, so the cast and crew must do all they can to salvage their show before curtain call.
Ray Strachan, a Winnipeg-born artist and U of M alumnus, is one of the actors in the production. He came to theatre through unconventional means, originally planning to pursue a career in sports management before a desire to improve his public speaking abilities led him to the stage.
“I thought, if I’m going to get into sports management, I’ve got to get rid of the stage fright, [because] I’m a horrible public speaker,” Strachan recalled. He decided to take theatre, joining the Black Hole Theatre Company where he fell in love with performing.
Strachan has been active in theatre for 14 years, performing in a variety of productions, including It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play, Romeo and Juliet, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Mountaintop, portraying famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the latter.
In The Play That Goes Wrong, Strachan plays Trevor, a “jack of all trades” in the company who handles lighting, sets, props and multiple other behind-the-scenes tasks for the play-within-a-play. Trevor has no interest in being seen or being in the show.His only goal is to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Strachan said he draws inspiration for his performance from many of the backstage crew he has worked with over the years, including those at MTC.
“I really love the fact that I get to represent the crew, who you usually don’t get to see,” Strachan said. “Folks don’t realize how important the crew is […] they’re an essential part of the process and they never get recognized, so it’s great that they get highlighted in this show and they have an active role on stage as well in this production.”
Strachan said audiences will enjoy the play’s genuine humour and the laughs it supplies, noting that the jokes resonate with everyone in the community.
“It’s the laughs that everyone gets,” he said. “You see these human characters going through these troubles and you totally relate to these laughs. Everyone’s laughing. You see families coming together, school groups [where] the teachers are howling, the students are howling, together […] seeing people enjoy it as a community, all together, laughing together, is the best thing.”
To any aspiring actors, Strachan offers simple words of advice.
“You’ve gotta love it to do it […] this is a hard craft to do if you don’t love it […] You don’t know, sometimes, when your next gig is. So, make sure you love it.”
The Play That Goes Wrong runs from Oct. 16 through Nov. 9 at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (John Hirsch Mainstage). Tickets are available at royalmtc.ca. Discounted subscription packages are available for post-secondary students until Oct. 31 at royalmtc.ca/University.
