Henry Lewis: How 'The Play That Goes Wrong' Became a Global Comedy Empire

0:00We sort of thought, well, will we get to Christmas? I don't know. And now it's been there nearly 13 years. Persistence is the most important thing, I think. You have to kind of be persistent and you have to stick with it.

0:12Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's the Trick? I am your host, Ben Hanlin, and this is the podcast where we sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And today's guest is Henry Lewis from Mischief, which is the theatre production company behind The Play That Goes Wrong. so if you've heard of that you'll know them they are one of the biggest British success stories in British theatre over the last decade this is an incredible story listen to this it was three mates and they started in a pub with this production and it's now gone on to the west end it's gone on to Broadway it's become a phenomenon so to bring you up to speed the things you need to understand about Henry's backstory is he was back in Lambda drama school and he put up a handwritten notice on the notice board saying I want to do an improv group load of people turned up about a dozen people and they eventually took that to the edinburgh fringe and that started the beginning of this little troupe of performers but fast forward to after drama school where they'd done a few plays etc he was living with two of his friends jonathan sayer and henry shields and they were jobbing actors and they're all living together in this flat and he comes home one day and they're working on material and he said i've got this idea for a farce this play a farce where all the if you don't know a farce it's where all the play and the comedy comes out of things going wrong etc they put this all together and they come up with this show the play that goes wrong and they go to a pub near them and they put it on there and they cobble it together and you're going to hear this story and somehow the reason i want to speak to him is he went from a pub to becoming one of the longest running comedies in the west end it's the fourth longest running play in the west end ever uh it's in broadway in 2017 they did 745 performances making it one of the longest running players on broadway at the time they've smashed it they're in 30 countries i could go on so i want to know how do you do this how do you build this global uh theater company so we cover that he tells us where the ideas come from how they did it and how they took it from where it started to where it was a really really interesting conversation and great behind the scenes of how theater and the west end work so enjoy this one this is what's the trick with what is the trick for creating a global comedy theater company that went from a pub to it's now in 30 odd countries go i'm not even sure i know well i well okay i'll reframe the question very soon let's start with the beginning that 2012 not the beginning but from 2012 where did the idea come from of the play that goes wrong and if we can go through it step by step of course yeah of course.

2:42Well, look, I mean, the idea came out of some work that I'd done when I was a teenager with a guy called Michael Green. He was a comedy writer. He wrote a book called The Art of Course Acting. That was a book that came out about 50 years ago now. And he was just a very funny writer and he wrote about his experiences in amateur theatre. And I went to a youth theatre in Ealing called The Questers and I worked with him and I just thought it was such a funny idea, the idea of sort of things going wrong on stage. And out of the back of the book, he'd written these short plays called course acting plays of all different genres where things went wrong.

3:18And so I experienced that a bit when I was sort of 15, 16, and I always thought that was kind of, that was funny. While I was at drama school, we formed an improv troupe, me and lots of people who I was at drama school with. We took shows to the Edinburgh Festival, and we'd come out the other side of drama school, and I think we were keen to kind of, we loved improv, but we were keen to do something scripted. Improv is amazing, but it's quite hard to get people to come and see it. And we wanted to do something that was funny and felt live and still had that kind of sense of danger of improv, but was scripted.

3:55And so I sort of thought, well, actually, this coarse acting thing is kind of right then because it's about being in the moment and the audience is with you. Everything is happening as it's happening. There's no fourth wall. It's all there. Yes. And it's sort of got that improv-y, dangerous improv feel, but it's scripted. And so there'd been like a course acting play that I'd written when I was probably 15, which was like a sketch, a 10-minute sketch. And so I spoke to Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, who I was living with. This was a year out of drama school or so, a year after we'd graduated.

4:27And so I took them these sort of battered old pages, and I said, I said, well, what do you think? And they said, yeah, there's something really funny in this. So we started writing it. we were working kind of regular jobs at the time so um i was working in a burger restaurant john was working in a call center henry shield's working in a pub so we would all come back quite

4:44Ben Hanlin: late but so you've got these jobs and you're all at the same time trying to build an acting career on the side going to auditions that kind of stuff yes yeah exactly exactly that and um yeah so and and we were doing other improv stuff too i think we were all quite kind of we all by that point that our company was a few years old we've been doing improv together for a while so i think everyone was really excited about it and sort of committed to it but obviously everyone yes is also kind of auditioning trying to get sort of gigs doing children's parties all that kind of stuff and so yeah so we had this we had this we had this sort of idea and we were writing late at night in our flat and over the next sort of i don't know in the autumn of 20 sort of summer autumn of 2012 we wrote an hour-long version of of this show and with this obviously the show itself so you've had this idea so just i'm trying to really get to the where your brains were in this moment so you've gone okay we know improv we like it but it's a bit of a hard sell so we need a bit of a play or a format or a thing to pin it all to and have that fun so you you start running this thing at this point because the play was about murder mystery correct correct so do you remember when you had that moment of ah we're not only we're going to do this fast off play but it's going to be a murder mystery or where did all that start fall into place that came the murder mystery element came quite early because we were sort of we had to decide you know what what play is it going to be that goes wrong so um we and i think we made it i think we made a good decision on murder mystery because i think we sort of said well i think what's funny about it is the you know the more seriously that the actors take it the funnier it is when it falls apart and so we wanted a serious genre we also wanted a genre that people understood and so we thought well murder mystery is pretty good well also it creates tension and the easiest way to get comedy and laughs is off the back attention right so absolutely so that helps okay great so you sat at night you're right in this group you've got this one hour yeah yeah then what well so i i had done a show at the old red lion which is a small french theater in north london the previous year so i knew the people who ran the theater and i sort of said well look do you would you like to put this play on and they said well you know maybe we we've got we've already got a show at christmas but it would be quite good for christmas this you know because it's a comedy and stuff and we said yeah well we've already got the show um so i said okay well maybe it doesn't work then and then they called back a week later or so and said well actually what we could do is we could do a late night slot right we could do that after and so we said well yeah okay that would be good and let's do that so it was the late night slot it was 9 30 um we had to kind of the main show had the theater so we had to we our set was stored actually on the roof of the theater like under some tarpaulin so we had to kind of bring it in their show finished at nine i remember and our show finished at 9 30 so we had half an hour by the time the audience had left we had like 15 minutes uh to bring in the set get everything set up um and uh and do this do this play and all the set i mean we did everything ourselves you know i built the set um you know rob and dave uh who play max and trevor uh well you know they hung the lights uh we did our own posters henry shields designed the poster like everyone kind of pitched it so it's a proper this almost fringe mentality of we're all going to club together so So at this moment, first of all, you've convinced your two flatmates, come on, we're going to do this thing.

7:54Ben Hanlin: And they've said, that's one thing. So that's three of you. Now, at this point, now you go, oh, by the way, we're doing it in December. Oh, right. It's never been tested or worked or anything. And we've got to build the sets. How many people have you then got on board at this point? And why are they doing it? Are they just coming along just to do something creative and be part of the ride at this point? Yeah, I know. I mean, at this point, it's probably a fairly small team. I mean, I think we had, there was eight in the cast. everybody in the cast was kind of also doing something else uh you know something else sort of productiony john and i were kind of producing the show um i i built the set as a as a say we said we sort of got we've got some props from a prop store we'd called in all these favors we had a director uh mark bell who who was our teacher at lambda he taught us clown so we were kind of like oh you know that's um that was also something that fed into it i think we were kind of like this is kind of a he studied clown at lecoq and that this is kind of similar to what course acting is in the sense that it's a comedy character in front of an audience so we were like oh he'd be he'd be great and so he came in and helped us a bit but we couldn't really pay anyone so he was kind of you know he gave us a bit of his time um everyone's kind of doing it for free whilst working a job a regular job as well so it was an intense time um and yeah we had i mean we had the we had nick thompson then the head of the theater he was a big kind of believer in the show so he was he He really liked it, I think, and wanted to have it back.

9:15So, yeah, but it wasn't a huge team.

9:17Ben Hanlin: So when you then put it on at Christmas, how long was that run? And were audiences there for it straight away? Were you playing to very small audiences to begin with? How does that work? No, no one. Yeah, it was four weeks, I think, the first run over Christmas. So this was Christmas 2012. And no, I mean, small audiences. You know, we had, you know, it was only a 60-seat theatre. but you know there were some there were some days where yeah we had you know we had 12 or 15 or something in there were some days where we were a bit more full and then that run you put this so you've gone from this idea that started off when you were 15 you've made this script and you've put it in front of an audience did you i mean i know it's been a while but going back to 20 did you know straight away show one or show two we've got it this is great or was it a bit of a mess how did How quickly was it an absolute hit in your mind?

10:08Not quickly at all, I don't think. I mean, I think we knew we had something with potential. We didn't know that we had a big hit. And I think, you know, I mean, even when it got into the West End and, you know, Play That Goes Wrong has always kind of been described by critics and people in the industry as a sort of sleeper hit. You know, it sort of slowly gathered momentum over time, I think. And that was the case at the beginning as well. there was no sort of one big moment but we had small successes and and with it you know so nick who ran the theater said we actually we do have a slot in march we'd love you to come back so we came back and did it there and i invited um charlie longstaff who's now works for lw programming their theaters we're going to an lw theater soon to do comedy about spiders at the adelphi but then she worked for atg uh programming uh trafalgar studios the small space which is no longer there but they had a small 100 seat studio in the middle of the west end on white hall and they said well look would you want to come and do do you want to come and do six eight weeks there

11:08Ben Hanlin: and so then it moved on to there and ah so so again i'm not from a theater background so the idea is you get in one venue and whilst you're there you're using that to promote getting everybody else who's got a slightly bigger venue to come and look and then they see it and then And that's how you get from one theatre to another. Is that right? You're definitely, yeah. I mean, you're definitely inviting, you know, people who are going to be useful to the future life of the show to come and see it. And we're doing that all the time. When we were doing the comedy about spies at the Noel Coward last summer, we were inviting the Schubert's to come and see it, who run lots of Broadway venues.

11:44So, yes, you're always trying to get those people. And in West End Broadway theatre, there's actually very few decision makers, you know, Because, I mean, in the West End, you've got 40 theatres, but probably, I think, 35 of those are owned by four big groups, right? L-W-A-T-G, NYMAX, Cameron McIntosh, or Delfort McIntosh. So there are very few decision makers who are deciding what gets programmed, so it's important to kind of get those people, I think, to come and see your work, yeah.

12:09Ben Hanlin: And already in this story, and I know I keep in a joke, but it sounds like you've got this balance between creativity, but then also a bit of hustle. Yes, I think so. I mean, we'd always kind of done that a bit. And we were using the contacts we kind of had from, you know, we invited the Pleasants to come and see it. Yeah, we were always wanting to run it from the very beginning as a sort of, not as a big kind of commercial machine, but as a sustainable enterprise. Something that could sustain itself so that once we do this show, you know, the goal was at the beginning, we couldn't pay everyone.

12:40But eventually to pay everyone and to make enough money so that we then got the money to go and do the next project. and that was kind of, that was always what we wanted to do.

12:48Ben Hanlin: And then what happens then? Is there a moment, is there a goal in mind of you like, right, we want to get to this size theatre and then we are a West End show or yeah, how did that work? Well, we never thought it would go to the West End necessarily. I mean, when we were doing it at Trafalgar Studios, Kenny Wax and Mark Benley who have been our commercial partners for a long time now, they came to see it. We met them. They're the two West End producers, brilliant producers and they came to see it and said well look there's a show on tour that had fallen out right because the star of the show was ill or something like that so they cancelled it and so this is so there's like a string of eight weeks in eight venues that we could put something into the show was only an hour this you'd have to write a second half we'd have to have an interval and stuff um have to be a two act show but but if you wanted to write a second act we could we could do this and so we said well yeah brilliant we'd love to do that and then it started people like the idea and and and people quite like the title i think and we're kind of intrigued by it at that point and we had a bit of kind of positive uh sort of a bit of you know a couple of decent reviews um uh from the trafalgar studios run better reviews than we got eventually when we opened the west end but um so there was a bit of kind of buzz around it and that meant we got a few more weeks on tour the tour ended up being like 22 weeks and then um we we we sort of thought well maybe we'll do kind of like eight 10 weeks in the West End, maybe 12 weeks, like a short season in the West End.

14:12Kenny invited Nika Burns from NIMACS to come and see the show in Windsor, and she really enjoyed it, and they were looking for something for the Duchess Theatre. And so they said, why don't you come along? And they put it on sale between September to Christmas of 2014, and we sort of thought, well, will we get to Christmas? I don't know. And now it's been there nearly 13 years.

14:34Ben Hanlin: so it's crazy yeah I mean it's yeah well let's talk about this so the the business or the behind the scenes of the West End so this moment you've gone to the Duchess Theatre here as a relatively unknown brand at this point yeah and you've got to convince everybody in London and the country to not go and see those shows and come and see your shows and build that so how does and also I think the other thing I want to talk we don't have to go into too much detail but financing these shows it costs money right i've heard that it takes i don't know if it's broadway but something like seven hundred thousand dollars a week to just to keep a show running like how does that all start to play you got to advertise it pr it what happens do people invest in it and you start splitting it up as a company do you mind explaining how that works yeah so i mean we we have um a group of investors on on on almost all of our shows sort of work in this way um we have commercial producers in Kenny and Mark.

15:29And then we have Mischief is an investor in our own work, but we also have lots of other private investors. That money all comes in to a pot. That's the capitalization of the show, right? That's the startup costs.

15:41Ben Hanlin: So that would have happened when you went to the Duchess. Somebody would have gone, right, we're going to need X amount to keep for this next few months, plus marketing, plus this, plus that one. Yeah, that's right. So it was£250 ,000 to start the show that got us to the first performance. And then it was sort of, I don't know, probably about, I don't know, 60 or 70 thousand pounds a week to run the show. And so, yeah, that was kind of, that was the sort of, that covers all your running costs, your marketing and all that kind of stuff would be included, but also that's everyone's salaries. And how did you find that 250?

16:12Did you go to one person or did someone come to you? No, well, Kenny and Mark raised that money. That would be a question for them. Exactly how, exactly. But it was a group of investors and them. and they gave all of us a small investment. So everyone in the cast put in a little bit of money and they had their own investors already. So it was a conglomerate of different people.

16:37Ben Hanlin: And when you launched then, was there a bit of a goal or a panel? Like you said, just try and get to Christmas is the goal. But did anyone sit you down and go, right, the expectation is first two months, ticket sales are going to be low. Then the word is going to get round and expect, almost like any business, expect to not make anything for six months and then eventually well how does that mindset work on a new show yeah well you're always trying to get to recoupment right which is you know the point at which you've you've paid back the 250 000 or whatever whatever the capitalization is so you're you know if you've got your 60 000 running costs you're maybe trying to take in maybe one week you get 70 but when you get 80 you're making a little bit of profit and you're paying off a little bit as you go i think we got to recoupment kind of um sort of in the spring i think we extended and we were like we're gonna go further than christmas we were like okay great we'll go you know and we were in the show at the time we said we didn't know if we were doing a year or if we were doing three months or what was going to happen we ended up doing about a year um so yeah it was always just like you know we didn't know how much further you know how much it was like a train going along the tracks but it's sort of foggy and you don't know how much track is left in in front of you um and we would it was never in anyone's mind that it would run for 13 years and beyond.

17:48So I think, yeah, it was just really kind of really surprising, really.

17:52Ben Hanlin: And did you notice that it was just people came and saw the show and it was word of mouth a lot of it, people going out and telling their friends and it slowly finding its audience that way? Yeah, definitely. I think it was. I think that the reviews that we had at the Duchess were okay. They weren't amazing. We had a couple of decent ones, but it wasn't a huge critical hit. So I think we were a bit sort of like, oh, I'm not sure, you know, how it's going to go down. But, you know, audiences, I think, really, really enjoyed it. And people liked the idea. People liked talking about it. People liked, I think, the irreverence of it.

18:23I think people liked the irreverence of it in the West End when it's sort of up against all of these quite serious shows. I think they liked a show that wasn't taking itself too seriously. I think people enjoyed that idea. I think we had some really, really fun marketing stuff that we did, particularly at the beginning. We were sort of running adverts upside down in newspapers and all that kind of stuff, having fun with the idea of things going wrong. I think that helped. And, yeah, and I think word of mouth was the core of it, really, and it expanded. We then did like a spot on the Royal Variety performance.

18:55I saw that. I remember. That was quite big, I think, for sales. That kind of really got us well into our second year.

19:01Ben Hanlin: Do you notice when that airs, do you notice almost the next day ticket sales start to go up? Is it as instant as that? Yeah, I mean, not even the next day. It's, you know, people booking while they're watching. The spike is within the time slot that the TV show is on, I think. And that was really great. I think that got it out to a wider audience of just people who were just kind of interested in seeing something funny and seeing a show in the West End. In that journey, when you were starting out and there was three of you at the helm and you were all doing other jobs, was there, and I don't mean to be negative, but was there any moment where either of anyone thought, I'm going to stop this, I'm going to quit and this is, you know, it's not paying the bills or the opposite, were there any what kept you going?

19:44Ben Hanlin: Because these things, they take a bit of time what were the indicators that you all thought we've got to keep going because of we're getting signals here, here and here? I do think there were signals really, I think that it was just that our intention, I mean that's the thing, I mean, because I think now Play That Goes Wrong is, you know, big commercial success been running for 13 years at the West End, but that was never really the that was never really the the intention at the beginning i think we just enjoyed doing work together as a group of friends that was how it started so there wasn't a sort of sense of like you know we haven't got away yet or we you know and we haven't you know we're doing this uh unpaid and that's a that's a kind of problem i mean it was it was quite tiring because everyone had to work and and and was also working we're essentially working two jobs right you're doing the show which is the thing you really wanted to do and you're also working in a restaurant or whatever So doing the thing was the thing that you wanted.

20:36Ben Hanlin: And that was almost the goal at that point, just doing the thing. Totally, just to get the show on and to do it. And I think there was no, I mean, no, it was never in anyone's mind that it would go on to do what it's done. It was just about doing something fun and making people laugh as a gang. That was the idea. So the reason I ask that is I think in anything creative or anything in life, there are these moments where, let's take podcasting, for example, right? Joe Rogan famously podcasted for three years when no one listened. And then everyone goes, oh, my God, it's the biggest hit in the world.

21:09Ben Hanlin: And there are so many examples of that. And even I have it, even with this podcast at the moment, there were questions you go, how much do I keep going? And there are these moments of when do you stop and when do you push through and what are the indicators to – do you see what I mean? I see what you mean totally. Well, I think one of the big pieces of advice I give to people about how do I make my own work is persistence is the most important thing, I think. You have to kind of be persistent and you have to stick with it, even if there are no indicators. There's not necessarily going to be, at the beginning of a project, what you're doing, there's not going to be tons of eyes on it and stuff.

21:49So I think you've just got to have faith in what you're doing. Keep learning, keep trying to improve it, make it better, see what happens. Keep trying to test it. I think that was the great thing about play that goes wrong was that we ended up doing probably six different versions right because we did the first old red line then the second run then the trafalgar studios then the Edinburgh festival then the tour and then into the west end each time we were changing it and being like oh that didn't really get a laugh let's see what we can do here can we come up with something a little bit better so that was kind of iterative and we were taking feedback all the time and learning it and growing it and i think had the you know had we put the first version the 50 minute version at the old red line straight on the stage in the west end that wouldn't have been as good it was The fact that it grew over time and got better and honed.

22:29And we learned about what that style of acting is. We learned how to get the script tighter. We learned how to scale it up and make it into a show that fits on a big stage as opposed to in a small studio. So all these were things that happened along the way. So I think you've got to invest in that if you're starting out. Yeah, like phase one is getting the craft.

22:47Ben Hanlin: Yeah. Get the craft so that when the opportunities come in phase two, you've put in those hours to deal with it. That's the thing. I think, I mean, yeah, that's totally the thing. I think if you, yeah, if you're at the beginning of something and you're sort of like, oh, is this going to connect? Is this going to kind of achieve what I want to achieve? I think, yeah, channel your energy into, totally into the craft of what you're doing and just sort of make sure that it's, make sure you're absolutely happy with it. Make sure that you're, you know, if you're creative, it depends what you're creating, obviously.

23:14But if you're creating something that it might be one piece where you're really honing it or it might be more like you're creating a way of working and a way of, I suppose, like on a podcast, right? You're generating a format and a way of doing something and making something. If you're focusing more and more on the craft, then I think, yes, totally, when that big opportunity comes, as you say, you'll be ready for it.

23:39Ben Hanlin: Well, there might be somebody listening here that's thinking, I've got an idea for a play. I've got a script in a drawer. I'm a young actor. or so you've obviously now got so much more experience, knowledge, learnings than you did in 2012. Very quickly, what have been your key learnings? And we're going to talk about rolling out globally, but in general, taking idea and getting a show off the ground and getting into the West End, what have been your key learnings in that process that somebody might benefit from? My goodness. Well, I think, you know, I mean, I think you've got to strike a balance, I think, always between doing something that you love and doing something that is accessible for an audience.

24:21I think it's kind of got to be both. I think if it's not something you love, then I think it's hard to put in just the sheer amount of work and effort and dedication to it. It requires, you've just got to kind of keep going and going in terms of refining something, writing something. I think that's important. But I think you've also got to think about the audience. I think, you know, and make sure what you're doing isn't something that maybe feels a bit like a vanity project or something that you're really interested in, but actually it's hard to make it connect i think if you can do both of those things um then i think you'll come up with something that you're really proud of and happy with but also something that audiences can enjoy i think that's important i think that i mean yeah like i mean i mean really really kind of persistence is key i think i think with a play like if you're starting out and you're like if you've not written a play before i would recommend writing with other people find some like-minded collaborators find people who you really enjoy spending time with who you feel you kind of share a creative sensibility with and sit down and come up with ideas.

25:25Maybe you end up with one play or, you know, if it's two people, you might write a play each, but you collaborate on it and you sort of work through it. I think always try and find the next step, you know, try and finish things, even if it's not perfect. I think, like, pursuit of perfection can be quite kind of debilitating. I think you've got to kind of be happy to just kind of happy for it to not be finished or quite right i think a lot of people write plays but don't finish them because they're kind of like i just don't quite know what it is it's better to finish

25:55Ben Hanlin: it even if it's not perfect so we we spoke to darren darren brown and his live shows he's constantly tweaking and he's putting shows out there that he knows he's going to still keep working on and are you very much like when you've got an idea for a show or a new show's coming out we're going to get it up and running it's going to go live on this day and it will be a thing and we will just we're not stressed that it's not perfect on day one we'll do our best and then we'll keep making tweaks along the way is that kind of your mindset yes i mean usually we don't always create shows the same way so i mean you know sometimes we are creating a show we have no idea if you know we'll ever even get on stage sometimes we are just like well the theater's booked and now we've got to work towards that as a deadline you know both both things happen i mean last year is a good example we did two new shows last year we did comedy about spies which is a show henry shields and i started writing in 2021 we wrote it over you know sort of in chunks of time that we had over about of course about three years we really got to the end of three years we were like i'm not sure if this one's ever going to get off the ground it was kind of you know we were i think um people weren't sure about it we really liked it but it was sort of you know it was a big show quite ambitious expensive so we were like well i'm not sure you know but you know eventually Eventually, we managed to get it there.

27:10Whereas the other show we did, Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, we knew that the theatre really wanted it. We had a tour booked and producers were keen. So we were like, OK, well, let's go. And then we wrote towards that.

27:21Ben Hanlin: Hello, it's Ben. This is a short commercial break. And I usually say, for those that listen, that I say it's a commercial break, we don't have any sponsors. But that has changed because today we have officially our first ever sponsor. And it is The Podcast Room. so the podcast room are podcast studios they're based all over the country you've got them in london brighton leeds birmingham it's where i'm recording right now it's where we recorded this episode they obviously can record the podcast they've got amazing cameras so you get the video they can do the editing as well it's where i'm going to be recording the next batch of these episodes they're a great team to work with so if you are thinking about making a pod or making great video for maybe your company give them a call they're called the podcast room look them up right let's talk about henry uh great guest play that goes wrong is um still i think it's on the western have a look at that but i want to tell you about their new play or their play that's coming back out comedy of spies which is coming back to the adelphi this summer so if you've not been to one of their plays have a look you can go on their website on miss chief's website and look for a ticket there we can go on their instagram as well and very fine very finally about me uh what am i up to we're coming into our summer break where all the corporates start to quieten down a little bit over the last few weeks i've done a keynote at the national sales conference about human connection and i've been doing some other end of uh well summer awards i've also done a website refresh if you've not been on there and you thought oh could ben do something for my company it's all on benhanlin.com and the final thing i'm going to say is thank you for all the messages about Derren Brown and about Paul Zerd in the last few weeks, if you've not listened to those two episodes, give them a listen.

29:07Ben Hanlin: And as always, if you have any friends that you think would be into this, if they're into theatre, if they're into performing or creativity, just WhatsApp them and say, hey, give them a little listen to this. I am waffling, aren't I? Have I got time for one more? One more little thing, and that is we launched the social page, What's The Trick pod. It's on Instagram. Have a look. Right, that's it from me. Let's get back into this episode with Henry Lewis. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. So we've obviously talked about the main, I suppose, spark that started the big company here. But let's talk about the ideas, the idea machine.

29:42Ben Hanlin: And you've talked about comedy about spies. Let's quickly dial into that. So that's a play that you've written, that you've got out. How do the ideas start? Do you sit there brainstorming going, come on then, guys, watch our next big one? Or do you read a book or see a film and go, ah, we like where did the new ideas start to come into your brain? There's never like I think the idea of like a big idea, like sometimes that happens. But like I find 95 percent of the time it's not a big idea. It's it's a series of small ideas. And writing is sort of just a process of making many, many, many decisions.

30:20And you start and you have one small idea. you're like oh you know maybe there's a scene where this happens i think a beginning an early idea within um the comedy about spies was to do we're like what what could we do we do farce what could we do differently with farce and we would sort of we heard about a hotel um that was in budapest that had been kind of um revamped after the end of the cold war and they found all these microphones and stuff in the walls and stuff because it had been this sort of all these spies had been camped out there and ever all those just like microphones everywhere in this hotel been used for years by you know kgb and all that kind of thing and we thought oh god that's quite interesting and so that was the kind of beginning of it we were like well so what okay so what if it's a farce but rather than doing the kind of classic thing you do with a farce which is in one room what if we do a couple of you know what if we do two rooms and there's people listening between the rooms and then we were like okay well what if it's a hotel like this was could you do an upstairs and the downstairs could you do four rooms and so then we had the idea of the of the of the sort of of of doing the the four bedrooms which is like the big kind of central sequence but that was kind of just an idea of like that's a kind of concept and so then you kind of go into like well who is it and who are the character and then so then you'll make you know you're you it all comes in small

31:40Ben Hanlin: chunks and so that that's really interesting because it you know you've gone people would have gone oh my gosh how have you come up with comedy about swive but actually you've gone hold on i saw a thing in real life that was truth that was authentic that happened that caught my attention so you're like oh that's caught my attention ding ding ding then you've played around with that and you've gone two rooms four okay then let's so then when you're developing it and you go and you walk in and you slam it down on the desk you go here's the next one we've got two rooms we've got this do you then have a system of working do you put stuff up on walls do you brainstorm plots do you have a a web of ideas how does how does that start to shape if you don't mind me asking no all of that i mean i think um we you know we do quite a lot of i think for that we did quite a lot of structuring first you know we were sort of looking at okay well if then maybe that's the middle quite often with a fast any play but like with a fast you really kind of i think the end of act one is quite key to be like you want to feel like it's you know you want to feel like you've done it you've done enough you've gone far enough within the first half so i think we were like oh that's quite good let's kind of let's end let's do the hotel let's end act one there and then let act two let's kind of go outside the hotel do something completely different um that's kind of what we did so yeah so we kind of we were and we knew from you know like it's you know important with a comedy to get people laughing quite early on so we knew okay well early there's a just there's going to be just a fun scene at the beginning and then we're going to kind of you know then we'll have a like a movement sequence and then we'll meet the characters in a kind of you know big scene in a kind of lobby where we meet everyone and that kind of stuff um and so yeah i don't know we were we were kind of you know we were sort of developing that um and yeah it just it just keeps kind of it keeps kind of growing and you add stuff and then you do yeah i mean we definitely do readings and things like that so that's the first time when we kind of get to a point where like we think we've got something we're not sure how much further we go with this without getting some outside opinions you also get to a point where you're just like you've looked at it for so long that you just kind of like wait we need some different opinions now we need some different voices so we read it with the team we have an amazing team at mischief of of actors who we work with a lot um so we they they know us really well they know our writing really well we know them really well um so they kind of i think they they get how to i think how to read this stuff really quickly we kind of know how to write for their voices so that's always really fun there's always really amazing feedback that comes from that so we do that process a few times yeah we then were sort of saying well we need to definitely workshop this especially with physical comedy and stuff i think it's just really important to do it you've got to just get up and do it because if you don't um it's just all about making sure that like dialogue fits exactly with action and making sure that just like you know especially with the the rooms and everything we were like we've got to do a workshop and we knew it's quite a big workshop because we we were like we need this four bedrooms thing we need to build it we need to sort of see it so when you say a workshop do you literally go into a space you build this set so i'm guessing you had to you throw some money and go right we're going to ring fence a budget of this and we'll build this set and we'll get this cast together and then how long does that last that process is it a week two weeks three weeks it depends on the project for spies it was a big workshop um yeah so i mean i think that i think that it was the same it was cost the same as as the taking play that goes wrong into the west end just for the workshop of this show we built this whole set so we had and we had six weeks of time which is a really good amount of time to kind of get into it really work it out to try and you know we we did we did a staging at the end of it where we did we staged kind of big chunks of the first half a couple of chunks of the second half we read the rest and so did like these presentations and that's really important too to kind of hear audiences laughing there's always you know when you're doing kind of you know a show where there's you know probably five jokes a minute or whatever you like you know some stuff will land some stuff won't some stuff won't be clear enough so getting that feedback is useful too but what's really interesting there again is this idea of and i've i've heard it was mark randolph who started netflix is you had an idea and instead of again think you've gone right we need to just get it get it tested how do we test this as quick as possible get into a space build a rough set get it tested and get it worked out and then off the back of that you can get interest so at netflix they used to actually do something similar where they would say somebody come to me with a new idea a new concept we're not going to talk about it for a year what is the quickest way to test this thing with an audience yeah so instead of building an app for six months who can we whatsapp a group of people today to see people will buy it or can we get a landing page up on netflix for and even if it's full of errors just test it and get some feedback and it feels like you've almost got that mindset of right we've got it okay we haven't got a date let's get it tested let's get and it's just moving through that quick phase yeah of that do you know i mean definitely i think yeah i think there's i mean i think i think you've got a i think you've got a i think with writing you've got you i mean you want to be confident i think when you're testing it um because i think uh if you're going to invest a lot of time in something you want to make sure that when you when you test it if it's a sort of high stakes test um yeah you know what someone's going to come and offer you a theater or not you want to make sure what you're showing them obviously is uh robust and and and you know you're really happy with it it's a real shame to show something and you're like oh i wasn't quite happy with that and then it kind of doesn't quite go your way that's that's that's tricky but yeah totally if you can if you can if you can test stuff quickly then um then yeah i mean the more information you have the sooner the better and that's why i mean i'm always keen whenever we do rehearsals i'm always kind of well let's get an audience in you know and quite often directors are sort of like what do you mean an audience yeah to the room and i was like yeah yeah in the room and they sort of said well we would have the audience in the theater and i'm like no no let's can we invite some people to come and just watch a scene or something and get you know or more if we can um i mean we when we did the goes wrong show for bbc the whole process was that so we we had um because in the theater we always are tweaking our shows as you're saying with darren you know we're tweaking the shows as we go we have audiences in so it's getting you know you're finding little tweaks and cuts not big changes necessarily but small things all the way through the run when you're recording a tv show you don't have that opportunity so we sort of said we've got to be really confident going in when we do it we've got one day to do it so we've got to be we've got to be really confident it's right so we had a two-week process for each episode of that show this is a sitcom on the bbc um and we but we would have the set so we'd record it over two days but we have the set set up in a studio we'd um rehearse for a week on the friday of the first week we'd bring in an audience right um and that was kind of like no one did no one really does sitcom like that at all like sitcom like classically sitcom is like filmed episode a week yeah you may be coming on the monday you do a read through or something there might be a couple of rewrites tuesday you rehearse wednesday you rehearse thursday you would record it or whatever um so it's that's that kind of process but we were like no no let's have a bit more time it's always you know more expensive to have more time but we we managed to get a bit more time so we would do it on the Friday, we'd do rewrites, we'd show it try and get, and I think it really helped it And we've talked about a lot of the highs let's talk about some of the failures if we can, if that's right because that's obviously where we learn when you look back over the last 14 years, what are if you're able to share, any particular biggish failures whether it's an entire show that didn't quite work out the way you wanted it or a certain thing and why do you think that was and what do you learn from that?

39:08um i don't know i mean i think you know i sort of i mean i do i do genuinely sort of love all the mischief shows for different reasons but i guess i mean the one that probably was the trickiest was a show called grown-ups and i think it was it was a show about it was a bit of a departure something quite different that we hadn't done before it was a show about five kids in a sort of play group or nursery school and um they grow up through the show so you meet them when they're five you meet them again when they're like 13 14 and you meet them again at a school reunion when they're 30 um and it's kind of tracks them through and it's about how people change over time and the third act is kind of a the reunion is more of a kind of classic sort of comedy um you know in the sense that there's kind of lots of kind of there's the sort of fast physical comedy elements and the first two parts are more sort of i don't know a bit more so just quite different but i think and we opened that straight into the west end that was just before cover 2019 and i think and it i mean the reviews were really not good um i think you know audiences weren't huge um it was tricky to get people to come and see it we did the tour of it it's tricky to get people to come and see it and convince people and so i think that was one that made us kind of really reflect i mean to me i think it came down to two things i think the title wasn't right and i think didn't didn't help people understand what it was and i think also it just didn't quite have enough narrative drive through it i think it it felt a bit more like a sort of acting exercise of like you know like a sort of a study of characters rather than a story um and so those were kind of two big learnings i think i took away from that one um and um and i think probably as well given like what we were known for and what that was we needed to do more work within the kind of comms of the whole thing to sort of say this is a bit different so that when people sat down to watch it that was kind of like i'm excited for this because it's a bit different rather than getting five minutes in and being like what's this you know yeah that kind of thing i think was a bit of a mistake with that one so that was kind of yeah something you've said a few times

41:14Ben Hanlin: during this chat is the title you i think you've mentioned this three times the title yeah it sounds like and and it's in a good because it is like you know marketing 101 or just psychology 101 it's really just keep it simple right so how important is the title for these shows well i think i mean I think it depends what it is. I think titles for some things... I think Les Mis is alright. They don't need to worry about it. Well, obviously, things that are a bit established and stuff like that. But titles are very important, especially for new work, I think. Because if you're doing a movie with Tom Hanks in it, it maybe doesn't matter so much what it's called.

41:51Because that isn't the reason people are going to go and see it. If it's a big film with a big star, or if it's a TV series that's known or whatever, then I think it's less important. But I think if you're doing something new, I think it is important. It's not like the be-all and end-all of everything. I think there are plenty of really successful things with not very interesting titles. But for us, I think it's been a big thing. I think The Play That Goes Wrong, the fact that it was called The Play That Goes Wrong, really helped. I mean, an interesting thing about the title of that. So when we first did the play at the Old Red Lion, we just called it the name of the play within the play.

42:32Oh, yes. Okay, right. So the play within the play is called The Murder at Havisham Manor. Which sounds like any other play in a way, right? Classic kind of murder mystery title. Yeah. But then you had people turning up to that who didn't realize it was a comedy, even though there were clues on the poster that it was a comedy. It wasn't inherent that it was a comedy. Whereas I think Play That Goes Wrong, you know what you're getting straight away. Yeah. So I think that was a lesson in sort of titling. we then went on to do the comedy about bank robbery and the comedy about spies and I think we, I mean I think that was sort of that spun off of The Play That Goes Wrong in the sense of let's have quite a descriptive title and the comedy about now has become in this way that goes wrong has kind of been a series of shows the comedy about now is starting to become a series of show with two in that series now so that's been quite good I think the fact that we had the comedy about in the title of spies meant that people were like oh it's like bank robbery and people who'd seen that understood that so there was that connection in the same way yes if you're doing peter pan goes wrong people know what play that goes wrong is yes you build a brand around it essentially exactly um what play or production do you wish you'd written it's probably the stuff i sort of grew up watching you know it's probably the kind of the absolute classics of british comedy um i loved blackadder when i was growing up i thought that was just kind of the best thing i think it's sort of so kind of um so distinct so unique in its kind of voice and the way it uses language and all that sort of you know just that stuff and the format of it we're going to take these characters and put them in different time periods so unique and just so funny as well I think that's a great one I think Faulty Towers is obviously a kind of classic farce.

44:04Ben Hanlin: Do you think Blackadder has been enough time that you could bring that to a theatre? I'm sure you could I mean lots of shows are doing that we've had Only Fools and Horses the musical Faulty Towers the play so you know I'm sure you could. Yeah I think Blackadder on stage would be pretty interesting. Let's talk globally. Let's talk global. Global, yeah, okay. So you went from West End to, correct me if I remember, I think you're in 30 plus countries now. Obviously you've done stuff, doing stuff on Broadway. And I'm conscious of time, but we're going to somehow sum up. How do you go from being this show that goes from the West End to now you're this global entity?

44:41Ben Hanlin: Can you tell the listeners and myself step by step, roughly, how something like that then happens? Do you then essentially fly global producers in? How does it go global? Well, I mean, there's a few different things that have happened that have sort of allowed us to expand into other countries.

45:01right from the very beginning when we first started doing Play That Goes Wrong way back, we signed up with Nikki Stoller, who's a literary agent at United and what she specializes in is international sales of theatre scripts. Right. So exactly the right kind of person to be speaking to about that kind of stuff. And she has all the right kind of contacts. And there was some interest. I think there was a piece of interest from a German agent and Nordiska, which is a Scandinavian agency. And they wanted to take on the script and represent it in those territories.

45:38Ben Hanlin: Because the Germans are known for their comedy. Absolutely. There are three non-replica Play That Goes Wrong productions this year. and they haven't been for ages so I'm really pleased but yes no it's okay it's going down well in Germany at the moment but yeah no you are very funny man then we sort of said well um look we'd like to we'd like to explore this more and try and get try and get the shows out there a bit more by this point we'd had you know Le Faux British which is the the French language version of Play That Goes Wrong run in Paris for a few years we we had been running we were starting to do new shows um this is 2016 17.

46:14Ben Hanlin: so you have this agent and then their job is to get the interest and then do you sell it as like in a box of here is everything and they pay you essentially like a flat fee or do you take your crew over there so i'm trying to work out how your company is now growing and the team that you're having to build around you compared to when you just started out well so so we start we formed a company called mischief worldwide which is that now our licensing company, so that does all the licensing. There are two types of productions that you can do. You can do a non-replica production, which is just you get the rights to the script and you go and do your own production.

46:46And then there's a replica production, which is you get the rights to the script, but also alongside that you get the rights to all of the direction, the set design, the lighting plot, the costume design, all of that stuff. And so if it's a non-replica, they get the text and off they go and they translate it and do it. And if it's a replica production, then yeah, we would send an associate director someone who knows or sometimes the director but more commonly an associate director sometimes an associate designer as well associate team depending on the scale of production would go out and absolutely yeah they would put the show in the local territory

47:18Ben Hanlin: so they fly out and they'll give a couple however many weeks it is to get that show up and running and they fly back and then maybe check in on it or whatever it is every now and again and then so does that mean then so talk to us about Mischief HQ yeah how many people then do you have in the team that how So currently, as we sit here today, do you know roughly how many of these shows you've got going on globally? And then how many in your team are needed to keep these plates spinning? I don't know how many productions there are today of any of them. It's sort of like this week. But it's over 50 countries now of all the mischief titles.

47:56And there's lots of productions all the time in terms of major productions. I don't know, there's probably sort of, I don't know, 15, 20 or so a year. But then there's all sorts of particular, like Play That Goes Wrong is released for school and community theater in the US. And Peter Pan has just been released, actually, as well. Peter Pan Goes Wrong. So there's loads and loads of school and amateur community productions and stuff in the US all the time. I've just seen Seattle reps doing it and stuff. So Mischief Worldwide team is a team of 10. And that's a licensing and a marketing department led by our CEO, Joe.

48:30and we're trying to expand the licensing team a bit, expand the licensing operation, see if we can, that's as we kind of start to release the new titles that we've got. Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, Comedy About Spies, Thespians, our first musical. So as we start to release those, the team's going to grow a bit. We're starting to bring in more digital people in-house. So yeah, the marketing has all come in-house as well under Mischief Worldwide to make sure that the kind of brand is sort of, everybody who's doing stuff with a Mischief brand is all cohesive.

48:56Ben Hanlin: So when we see a play that goes wrong or one of your productions, and not an amateur one, but I mean a ticketed one in Broadway or Germany or wherever it might be, there's effectively a team of 10 of you that are keeping all of that together. Is that right? No, not quite. So that's the licensing and the branding and the marketing and stuff. The actual shows themselves are produced by, so the first class productions, i.e. the UK and US, are produced by our commercial producers. Kenny and Mark produce the shows in the UK. We have different producers in America and they have general management teams and production coordinators and stuff who are doing the producing of the show.

49:33So that tends to be, that's the sort of separate team.

49:36Ben Hanlin: So let's talk about you for a moment then, Henry. Yes. What do you do now? What do I do? Well, what I want to, because obviously we know, you started out creatively and coming up with the ideas, delivering the ideas, being part of the productions. Now you're part of this global brand. I'm guessing your job has to change. So even if we start with today, if you want, or this week, what's a typical day look like for you now that's a good question i think i mean and i talk about this a lot you know with john who i run the company with and internally with it with the team um you know i obviously i started all of this in order to be able to do the creative bit of what i do to do the writing and the performing that's kind of what i love doing and what i want to do um obviously the company grows to a certain point you're sort of like well actually there's an enormous amount that also needs sort of overseeing within that and that takes up a lot of time so i'm kind of you know i'm i'm trying to find ways in which i can do that and make sure that everything you know and then the the team have the support they need and um everything is kind of well managed but also make sure that we can still do the creative bit because that's kind of at the heart of what we do and and and make sure we can keep writing the keep writing new shows and doing new stuff so i'm kind of always trying to balance those things um but this week i mean this week we're writing a a new sitcom pilot um that's kind of been the bulk of the week we've had um there's that sort of other things as well and we had a mr worldwide board meeting yesterday so that was kind of like four till seven at the end of the day or whatever that's to talk sort of with the whole sort of top team there um and then um i've had various different kind of calls and catch-ups and different bits and pieces sort of that's normally doing meetings and stuff in the morning keep a kind of solid chunk of time for writing so that's like 11 till sort of three four so you're still trying to even though you've got all of this i suppose business going on you're trying to still be at the helm of the creative stuff yeah yeah definitely i think to me like yeah to me i mean and and you know like all of the i mean we've talked a lot about the kind of business end of it today but i mean yeah that is you know hugely important and without that the kind of whole thing can't kind of operate um but um yes no i mean my my my sort of my my my main desire is to is to keep you know make sure i stay at the creative end of the business as much as i can yeah great thank you very much we're going to start wrapping things up uh we are going to move on to my final fast five okay are you ready for my final fast five i am yeah right so uh we're going to start my highlander question are you familiar with the film highlander Not ever so familiar, but I know roughly the vibe.

52:10Ben Hanlin: The vibe is they are immortals that go around killing other immortals. And when they kill another immortal, they get to steal their knowledge as well as their power. Okay. So if you could steal anyone's expertise and skills, dead or alive, who would it be? Oh, my God. Dead or alive of anybody, who would I steal their expertise? I think that it would be someone, I don't know, someone who I think has quite good balance. because I think maybe I struggle with that slightly in terms of just sort of probably working a little bit too hard, struggling to kind of just like kind of divide things up a bit and kind of live a balanced life.

52:49So I don't know. I feel like Barack Obama has balance in his life. I mean, I could be completely wrong.

52:56Ben Hanlin: The former president of the free world is what I will do and learn how to be president and rule the world. No, I don't want to rule the world at all. I'm not interested in that. But I feel like he's got such a kind of, I don't know, so much grace and presence and just kind of wisdom. I think that you've got to go for him, right? Fine. Fine. You've got that. That's it. Time capsule. Okay. You can only keep one project or thing you've ever worked on. The rest of your work is going to be incinerated forever. What's going in the time capsule? Probably Peter Pan goes wrong. Peter Pan goes wrong. Why would that one?

53:32I think that one has just been always just like really, really special to do. And just, you know, I think just have fond memories of all the shows, but especially fond memories of that one.

53:45Ben Hanlin: Nice. Thank you. All right. That's kept. Culture Vulture. What is the one book, film, TV, theatre, anything you've seen recently that you've loved that you want to share? My goodness. Well, I mean, I loved Obsession. I thought that was really cool. Have you seen the movie Obsession? No. so obsession is a movie um i just saw it with my friend josh a couple of days ago um and it's incredible like it's this film i mean the guy is like 27 or something the guy made it and um he directed it he wrote it and he edited it um it's a movie that was made for i think for 750 000 dollars um so you know a small budget movie um and it's i mean it's a horror film and i won't give away too much about what happens but it's kind of i don't know like it's it's sort of it's more than a horror film as well i would say it's sort of you know there's a lot there's a lot kind of a lot of just really good plotting and a lot of kind of really good drama fantastic performances and it's just so bold it's like a first movie that someone's made it's so kind of bold and interesting and it's quite i mean there's there's elements of it are like probably a bit more gruesome than would be like normally to my to my kind of taste but i think it is just like just an extraordinary piece of filmmaking and um and and just kind of like yeah i think just like a kind of just sort of all my i don't know i would call it horror or maybe it's more i don't know like a sort of mystery thriller yeah um but it's sort of it's about this um about this group of kind of about people in the 20s um and this guy who likes this girl and wants him to like her back and he gets mixed up in a sort of form of magic i suppose um in trying to make that happen and how it how it doesn't work out and so it's just yeah i mean it's it's it's it's pretty kind of shocking and dark it's not like mischief stuff at all if people listen to this and think ah it's a light-hearted comedy it's not although there's a lot of humor in it but no i just thought that was i thought that was amazing yeah i thought you were just gonna say like stepbrothers or something but no so i'm sure that's great too no okay good obsession fine um magic wand i'm good now obviously you you're not a stranger to magic henry but i'm going to give you my magic wand you can make with this wand anything vanish from the world of theater comedy entertainment what do you want to make vanish i would maybe say awards oh controversial go on i just i don't really get I don't really get awards I feel like the one I guess I've always felt about awards that like I think it's amazing to work in creative industry and that kind of in itself is its own reward and so I think the idea of kind of pitching things against each other is odd and I think that that was always the thing at school when I did kind of drama I was always like this is better than like all the kids who are doing sports because there's no kind of winners and losers and people being like I've won this you've not you've done it yeah that's the point you've done it yeah it's everyone working together in a collaborative way and there's not a necessarily a sense of competitiveness about it and i think awards kind of makes like theater and comedy or whatever into a weird sort of sport which i think is slightly strange i also think that people then it becomes this thing and ultimately what is just a marketing thing right theaters or you know whatever cinemas are empty during the summer so there's there's an awards season and that's kind of why but it's kind of become this kind of false idol now i think where people really chase it and really worry about it and if they don't win it they get upset and i think it's just like i think it i don't think it necessarily does does the industry much good okay right well they're gone no more rewards there you go final question for the entire show what is the trick in having a successful career as someone who creates theatre and comedy for a living?

57:32I think the trick is to do work that makes you happy, to try and find where that intersects with what audience is like, to work hard, to collaborate with people who you really like. I think if you work hard that will mean that any success you have will feel earned if ultimately in the end you don't quite get where you want to get to if you've collaborated with people you enjoy spending time with you'll still have had a great kind of adventure anyway um and I think whatever you do in art or in life I think if you're sort of working in you know the service of someone else, rather than saying, well, what can this industry do for me?

58:25Say, what can I do for this industry? I think then the whole thing, successful or not, will be rewarding. Fantastic. Thank you very much.

58:37Ben Hanlin: Right. That was Henry Lewis. Fantastic episode. I'm going to keep this extremely brief. If this is your first time, go back and listen to a couple of the last, previous episodes. You've got Paul Zerdin. You've got Darren Brown. And as I said, we're on social media I'm at Ben Hammond you can drop me a message tell me what you think about this one and we'll see you next week bye bye