LOS ANGELES — Danger lurks around every corner, or so it would seem when watching "Peter Pan Goes Wrong," currently playing at Center Theatre Group's Ahmanson Theatre.
"The whole thing collapses like that," Henry Lewis demonstrated, knocking over a small end table that his character tries to climb on with disastrous results.
The show, like its predecessor “The Play That Goes Wrong,” is the brainchild of Henry Lewis and Henry Shields and their third collaborator, Jonathan Sayer.
In this show, Sayer plays the role of Dennis, who is playing the role of John Darling. That’s because the play is actually a play being presented by the wonderfully ambitious, accident-prone, and entirely fictitious Cornley Youth Theatre.
All the actors do double duty, playing members of the company putting on a perilous performance of “Peter Pan.” Shields is Captain Hook and Chris Bean, the very serious director. Meanwhile, Lewis plays the co-director. Or so he says.
“Chris Bean would say the assistant director,” Lewis explained, a joke that’s also reflected in the very funny program found inside the program. “He’s jostling for power. And he plays a number of small roles.”
Those minor roles see Lewis in several small spots. As Peter’s shadow, he dances his way out of a toy box.
“He’s quite a kind of jazzy shadow,” Lewis said, admitting that he choreographed the Fosse-esque moves himself.
He also plays Nana the dog and spends a good deal of time stuck in a doggie door — something that actually happened to him.
“I locked myself out of my house when I was about 15,” he recalled, adding that it was pouring rain that day. “The only way I could get…was through the dog flap, and I got stuck and my mum’s boyfriend at the time had to saw me out.”
He’s not alone in getting in some tight spaces.
The Darling children end up in a sort of club sandwich, as level by level their triple decker bunk bed collapses with them inside. Lewis insists it’s safe… at least now.
“Of course, the first version we built in a dodgy workshop in South London was less safe,” he admitted with a laugh, “but this version is completely safe with gears and chain mechanisms and everything.”
The action may seem chaotic, but it’s a controlled chaos, carefully choreographed to keep it as safe as possible for the crew, the actors and the visiting guest celebrities who take turns as the Narrator.
Bradley Whitford did the first few weeks at the Ahmanson. Daniel Dae Kim took over the chair this week, and the run has been extended, with Neil Patrick Harris reviving his role for the final week.
He also did the show on Broadway earlier this year.
When not narrowly escaping calamity on stage, the creators are working on a new comedy they hope to open in the UK next year. It’s not another in the Goes Wrong series but rest assured, it will still involve a good bit of crashing around.
Whatever it is, it’s bound to be funny because the most exhilarating part of their thoroughly exhausting job is nearly 2,000 people laughing their heads off.
“Well, it’s really satisfying to make people laugh,” Shields said. “And it’s nice in times like this, that we all know a kind of troubled times. It’s nice to have a show that, that anyone can laugh at. And people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, different beliefs. Everyone can come to the show and laugh together. And that’s lovely.”
It’s the happy thought that might help Peter Pan fly, and hopefully not into any walls.