An award-winning play that premiered in London has made its way to Rapid City—but, just barely.
“The Play That Goes Wrong” is a farcical murder mystery. Matt Vidal is the director of the show which makes its Midwest debut this week.
The show hastoured across the United Kingdom, Australia, and made its way to Broadway in 2017.
The rights to most professional plays, are held by play publishing houses. This means written permission is required to produce a copyrights play or musical. While the "The Play That Goes Wrong” was running on Broadway, the rights were not available to anyone.
Then Vidal heard the show was not going to be brought back to Broadway so it was available for local and nonprofessional theaters.
“So, we snagged the rights," he said. "And then the next day, apparently they changed their minds and found out it was going to get renewed for a Broadway run. So, they immediately took the rights down.”
Vidal said he was lucky. Only three theater companies in the country, outside of Broadway, will be allowed to produce the play. Vidal’s is the only one in the Midwest and the first to perform.
“The only two places you can see this play in the world right now are on Broadway and right here in Rapid City,” he said.
Vidal said officially the show starts at 7:30 but he encourages audience members to come early.
“You get to see some fun improv and kind of behind the scenes stuff if you come in right at 7pm. There's some pre-show stuff that happens as you walk in the door and some of the pandemonium that goes with that,” he said.
The show runs two weekends until October 30th at Seraphim Theatrical Entertainment.
