Watching ‘Grand Rehearsal’, a Nepali adaptation of the internationally acclaimed play ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’, feels like being caught on a comic loop, where chaos becomes the main plot. Presented by Mandala Theatre, the play’s name itself reveals the plot, a story that follows the grand rehearsal of a play.

Directed by Umesh Tamang and co-written with Anup Neupane, it uses comedy to depict small onstage disasters.

There is a different kind of amusement in witnessing a play built entirely on how it can be messed up. In ‘Grand Rehearsal’, the plot revolves around an amateur theatre group that decides to stage a murder mystery play called ‘Bihe ko Tutulko’, which translates to ‘bumps in a marriage’.

It starts with the director in the play delivering a long monologue about how the soon-to-premiere act is his directorial debut, almost begging the audience to like it. But the actors, ranging from a veteran to freshly picked street performers, have a big hand in the play; they are not prepared at all.

On the stage, Bijay (Amir Tamrakar), one of the characters, mysteriously dies on the night of his engagement party, locked inside his room. His fiancée’s brother, Milan (Anup Neupane) and housekeeper, Anup (Milan Karki), find him lying on his sofa.

Then begins the falling apart of the entire stage and the actors’ line retention. The door, through which characters are supposed to enter to inspect Bijay’s death, gets jammed. Adding to the series of mishaps, Bijay’s fiancée, Rakshya (Ruja Raut), a renowned film actress, starts her melodramatic gestures, acting sad.

When the play’s characters begin to reveal their true personalities through their on-stage personas, the murder mystery’s sensitivity turns into a carefully constructed dumpster fire.

As the play progresses, Inspector Ruja (played by Rakshya Thapa) joins the investigation. She is the only character (the others address her as a ‘he’) who, for the most part, remembers her lines and tries to de-escalate the mistakes her actor friends are making.

We also discover an affair amid all this, comically presented through cheeky exchanges between the couple.

In the middle of the play, due to the door being slapped across Rakshya’s face (the character), she faints on the spot, creating a dilemma about who plays her character next. Her replacement is a guy (played by Sujan Ghimire) who manages sets behind the scenes and barely knows how to read his lines. Rakshya’s replacement, trying to act feminine, feigning distress like the original character, is the funniest segment of the entire play.

After Milan finds out the news, he is furious with Santosh; they then fight with spoons, an alternative to the swords that were forgotten during the play. Then we hear gunshots inside the apartment, which brings the death of another character.

To repeat the investigation process, the other characters try to carry the victim’s body to a stretcher. But the twist is that the said ‘dead body’ hangs his hands on the stretcher. Another part of the inside play shows a corpse that can’t play dead and reawakens from time to time.

As the interrogation builds and characters such as gardener Amir (Santosh Giri) present evidence, suspects quickly fall from Rakshya to Anup. But more than a murder mystery, the play turns into a game of ‘What destruction is coming next?’

Additionally, the characters Shreeshesh Shrestha and Bal Bahadur, who are supposed to handle the lighting and sound effects, play a larger role than expected, creating a comic disaster.

The play leans on situational irony rather than premeditated jokes. Also, a few elements of pop culture references and memes really set the tone of the play. Like a meme of a witch’s laughing audio in the background and the random mention of Rajamouli after seeing the letters RR. Through this, ‘Grand Rehearsal’ has sought to elevate the theatre experience by emphasising relatability to audiences.

Similarly, the timing precisely shows an engineered circus-like performance. By arranging the technical part of the setting simultaneously in coordination with the actors’ movement, the orchestration of accidents seems natural. At one point, the second-floor base is supposed to fall off at an angle while the actors stand there. What seems dangerous to even witness is created into a spectacle of laughter, showing the level of precision and control the actors really have.

The play had online hype built around it, with celebrities and veteran actors like Willem Dafoe expressing warm wishes for its success on Instagram.

Grand Rehearsal

When: Until May 17

Where: Mandala Theatre Nepal, Thapagaun

Time: 5:30 pm (every day except Monday)

1:30 pm (extra show on Saturday)

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Entry: Rs300 to Rs1,000