Usually, I do not find great entertainment in plays, I am much more of a musical theatre fanatic. Often I immediately associate the idea of a play with a tedious plot that is guaranteed to bore me to sleep by the end of Act 1. Perhaps this is why I did not set my hopes very high going to see The Play That Goes Wrong at the Birmingham Hippodrome. This was a regretful mistake on my part. After tonight’s performance, I have been reassured that my days of yawning my way through dreary stage plays are over.

I went into the theatre not knowing much about the play itself; I understood the concept – this being about a play that goes intentionally wrong – but I questioned whether the comedic element of the play would get tiresome and somewhat cringeworthy. Oh, how much further from the truth I could have been. The play was anything but that, having the audience in stitches before it had even officially started.

Ten minutes before the show began we could see members of the play’s production team searching for their lost dog, Winston, asking us to look for him under our seats, before making desperate attempts to fix a clearly broken set, telling the audience to talk amongst themselves. This was hilarious and immediately drew in the audience’s attention, giving us a small taster of what we could expect throughout the evening.

Ten minutes before the show began we could see members of the play’s production team searching for their lost dog, Winston, asking us to look for him under our seats

This production itself saw the Cornley Drama Society put on a murder mystery play, The Murder at Haversham Manor, with the performers doing everything in their power to make sure the show goes on. Every character was played to perfection, completely owning the stage with their humour and comical presence. The actors have to be applauded for playing characters within characters – an original concept that was successfully executed.

The character of Annie (Laura Kirman) was a particular favourite of mine; she started off as a runner, hilariously acting as a mantlepiece holding props in place as it fell apart. Desperate times called for desperate measures and soon Annie was taking over Sandra’s (April Hughes) role of Florence (she had been accidentally knocked unconscious by a dodgy door). The audience was in floods of laughter watching her impromptu performance as she struggled to find her lines.

The role of Florence was hilariously passed through multiple actors, with even sound and tech’s Trevor (Gabriel Paul) getting a chance to perform a somewhat questionable rendition of Florence’s sexual ‘episodes.’ Moments like these were of comical genius, with the adult audience lapping up innuendos aimed at them whilst they passed over younger audience members’ heads.

Every character was played to perfection, completely owning the stage with their humour and comical presence

Many aspects of the play reminded me of Fawlty Towers, quite literally everything that could go wrong, went wrong – in the most entertaining of ways. Tom Babbage’s Max shone in his role of Cecil, reminding me of Basil Fawlty himself; the audience chuckled as they watched him exaggerate his every move and expression, with the audience’s reaction only sparking him to gain more enthusiasm.

The stage performers were not the only ones to have the audience smiling though as Trevor also caused chaos by missing sound effect queues or accidentally playing Duran Duran as he was too preoccupied with eating a banana to notice. These details were pleasantly unexpected and showcased the intricacy of the script, ensuring that the disasters expanded much further than the main stage.

Adding to this, the set helped contribute to the majority of calamities, from the misplacement of props causing spontaneous improvisation to the gradual destruction of the set (by the end of the play the walls had fallen down leaving just a carcass of the set behind) which helped drive the comedy forward. When the set was not falling down, it was accidentally being set on fire instead.

Every member of the audience left the theatre with a gigantic grin on their face

If this scenario was not so funny, you would almost be inclined to feel sorry for the ‘actors’ as they witnessed all of their efforts and hard work collapse as if it were the set itself. 

By the end of the play, my jaw was aching which made a lovely change to my usual reaction when seeing a play. With every second that went by, the laughter never stopped. Every member of the audience left the theatre with a gigantic grin on their face – a lasting feeling of ecstasy that was all down to Mischief Theatre’s play going disastrously wrong. The rumours were true; The Play That Goes Wrong really is a comical sensation.

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