INTERVIEW: Chris French has taken a few ‘Wrong’ turns
Photo: Chris French has had a multi-year journey in The Play That Goes Wrong. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by BBB with permission.
NEW YORK — Chris French has one of the most unique tenures of any actor who has appeared in The Play That Goes Wrong, the hit show that continues to pack in audiences at New World Stages in Midtown Manhattan. The comedy depicts a dedicated, but amateur troupe of actors who are putting on a murder mystery play akin to an Agatha Christie yarn. French plays the part of Jonathan, an actor in the company who is portraying the character of Charles Haversham, a corpse that can’t quite stay dead.
French came to the comedy franchise in the pre-COVID-19 days when the play was touring around the United States. He has been with the company, in one way or another, ever since.
“I joined in 2019, toured for about six or eight months,” French said in a recent phone interview. “And then COVID shut everything down. The tour didn’t come back, but here in New York, off-Broadway came back. And they also launched a Chicago production for about six months, and so when those reopened in late 2021, I came in as a sub and emergency cover, all the kind of COVID coverage stuff. And I did a lot of that in 2022, back and forth between New York and Chicago, and then went full time with the show as Jonathan in 2023, and have been there ever since.”
But no two days are the same for French. Although his main part is that of Jonathan, he’s also an internal cover, which means he understudies another role: Chris Bean, the director of the theatrical fiasco, who also plays the detective in the show-within-a-show.
“I’ve jumped around a bit,” he said. “I was actually on for Chris both shows on Wednesday, just two days ago, so that’s a lot of fun because it keeps me very fresh. There are still some surreal moments where I’m looking across the stage at myself in a little bit of a mind-bending exercise. … Wait a second, no, that’s not your line tonight. It’s his line tonight.”
Keeping track of his lines for both characters pales in comparison to the roller-coaster ride that French was on during the pandemic. Once performances started up again, he shuttled back and forth between the New York and Chicago companies, sometimes in the same week.
“I had some fun stories during that whole COVID time when folks were being flown all over the place,” French said. “They called me in the morning and said, ‘Can you pick up your costumes and make a flight at Newark by 2 o’clock?’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I made the flight, flew out there. I did the show in Chicago as Chris Bean; I had been on as Jonathan here. And then during the show I got a text from the stage manager here in New York saying, ‘We need you back in New York. We have a COVID outbreak. You need you to get on a plane right after the show.’ And they ended up putting me on a plane first thing the next morning, and I flew back to New York and did the matinee as Jonathan the next day here. So it’s been an exciting and at times wild ride, grateful for things to have calmed down a bit.”
French, who has also appeared in The Greenwich Village Follies and Byuioo, first experienced The Play That Goes Wrong in 2017, when the show opened on Broadway with the original cast. The actor had some regional work planned for that summer — two roles, in fact. He was set to perform in The Three Musketeers and Romeo and Juliet, so he knew he would be fully committed from May to September.
“And I really wanted to see the show because it looked like a lot of fun, and it also looked like something that I might do somewhere down the line,” he said. “I was thinking, oh, OK, this is a fun show that will probably last through the summer, maybe the end of the year. I want to make sure that I see this before I go in case it’s not here when I get back in September, and so I went and saw the original cast at the Lyceum Theatre, had a great time, went off and did those shows and then many others in the time between 2017 and 2019.”
French said he would have never thought that this Broadway show would have transferred off-Broadway and still be chugging along eight years later. He called the comedy the “little engine” that could.
“It’s very special to be a part of something like this and to be a part of a community like this,” French said. “Then back in 2019, I actually booked the tour from an equity open call. I went to an open call audition and got called back from that, and then several rounds of auditions later, I actually booked it. But at some point during all of that, I went and saw this production after it had transferred from the Lyceum to New World Stages just because it had been over two years since I had seen the show, and I thought that would be worthwhile.”
That experience from the audience at New World Stages was a transformative one. He was eyeing each role on stage, and funnily enough, he didn’t put the character of Jonathan high on his list.
“In retrospect, it’s very funny to me because I was watching Chris Bean and Robert and Max and some of these other parts and thinking, oh yeah, this is fun,” he remembers thinking. “Jonathan has a lot of stunt work, and there were a few moments early on in the show where I was like, yeah, maybe not that one. I remember some of the stunts that happen later in the show, and I was like, I think he’s going to fall from up there at some point. Then sure enough it happened toward the end of the show. Maybe any of the parts but Jonathan, and sure enough that’s where I landed. But it’s been a blessing because it’s been a lot of fun to stretch myself and learn and grow and get really comfortable in that part of the play.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Play That Goes Wrong, featuring Chris French, continues its run at New World Stages in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
