Director: Mark Bell
Writers: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields
Schadenfreude, the pleasure of seeing things go wrong for others, sums up the appeal of The Play That Goes Wrong by Mischief Theatre and marks a riotous ten years in the West End at the Duchess Theatre. One of the most successful fringe-born franchises, it started life in The Old Red Lion, an improvised show by a bunch of out-of-work LAMBDA graduates. Since this spit and sawdust genesis, it’s won a slew of awards, been to Broadway, toured internationally and boasts an array of spin-off shows including Peter Pan Goes Wrong, The Comedy About Spies, and Christmas Carol Goes Wrong – coming soon.
A new cast ( the 11th) takes on the gag-a-minute roles of the hapless am-dram outfit, Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society. They stage a classic whodunnit, Murder at Haversham Manor, a familiar-looking country house which turns out to be like a treacherous game of Mousetrap, a technical feat by set designer, Nigel Hook. There’s a dead body, various Cluedo-like suspects, and a detective inspector. This is royal ham, off-the-scale parody, served in multiple layers. The play starts before the play starts as the stage manager and technician, respectively, seek a lost dog and a Duran Duran CD. The pompous, deluded director (Jack Hardwick as Chris Bean) sets the tone with an introduction and berates the audience: “Stop laughing! This isn’t panto.”
In The Play That Goes Wrong, the corpse of Charles Faversham (Jonty Peach as Jonathan Harris) finds it impossible to be stiff. Props are mislaid, cues missed, words hilariously mispronounced by the butler, Mitesh Soni, as the character Dennis Tyde, who plays Perkins. There are explosions, fires, and the sets collapse. It’s two hours and five minutes – with an interval – of non-stop clowning, melodrama, slapstick, and physical theatre. Older audience members will recall the Two Ronnies’ Mastermind sketch where the questions and answers are out of synch, or numerous Morecambe & Wise sketches where everything is fudged and collapsing. The old ones are best.
Tom Wainwright, who plays Max Bennett who gawkishly takes on the Cecil Haversham role, has great comic talent. Thin and lanky with big eyes and curly hair, he has funny bones; his expressions and movements induce laughter before he’s said a word. Ronnie Yorke plays gum-chewing, rock-loving Trevor Watson, the sound and lighting technician. His lack of interest in the show he’s working on is fun, and sometimes he sabotages for the hell of it, like striking thirteen notes on the clock that strikes midnight.
The two women, Charlotte Scott who plays Sandra Wilkinson as Florence Colleymoore, the bobbed flapper whose fiancé is found dead on the day of their engagement, and Izzy Edmunds-Clarke who plays Annie Twilloil, the stage manager who must understudy for Florence when she’s knocked out, bear the most violent of mishaps. Although the rough punches and door slams are all mimed, the girls seem to carry the lion’s share of humiliation. Girls’ knickers and gaping crotch shots are apparently funny.
The Play That Goes Wrong has earned its stripes to become an established player in the West End. It was delightful to hear younger members of the audience engaging with the madness and mischief of it all, entering this big game where bad is good. Exchanging one form of magic and illusion for another, it’s an impressively engineered and crafted production. As well as providing two solid hours of guffaws and chuckles, it exposes the construct and skill of theatre and reminds us of all the things that go right – most of the time. Marmite it may be, but this schadenfreude franchise is set to run and run.
Booking until 30 August 2026
