'The Play That Went Wrong' Review
Venue: Duchess Theatre, Covent Garden
Dates: Until 2 April 2023
OUR VERDICT:
Truth is invariably stranger than fiction.
Take three graduate students, short of cash, who concoct an idea for a play, have a trial run in a pub, manage to find a West End producer and subsequently achieve West End and Broadway success, even spawning their own television series.
Sounds unlikely? Well, it’s the story behind the Mischief team who devised The Play That Goes Wrong, which opened in London in 2014 and which now has a brand new cast at the helm.
In the best tradition of farce - it has much in common with Michael Frayn’s Noises Off.
The show is essentially a play within a play, the comedy coming from the disastrous attempts of the fictitious Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society to stage a murder mystery.
As the show opens the audience sees backstage as the stage manager vainly attempts to keep the flimsy set from disintegrating and a sound technician wanders around trying to find a lost dog.
The show’s director introduces the mystery, which is in the vein of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap as the discovery of Charles Haversham’s body in the study triggers a madcap caper.
All begins with total mayhem and this manic pace is sustained throughout; full kudos must be given to the effervescent cast for keeping this frenetic level of energy going so well, it’s no mean feat over a couple of hours.
For me it would have been funnier if perhaps starting in lower key mode and then building up to full-throttle madness, many audience members however clearly couldn’t get enough of the high-octane insanity unravelling before their eyes.
The self-conscious thespian antics of Cecil Haversham will amuse many, every ripple of applause encouraging further over-the-top staginess and the mistimed appearance of many performers enhances the zaniness.
Whether you find the action irresistibly hilarious or a tad hammy depends more on personal taste than performance quality, the cast are generally terrific, committing wholeheartedly to the ever-escalating farce and complete escapism.
There are doors sticking, props disappearing, parts of the set dislodged, cast members knocked unconscious or replaced; you name it, it is all-out chaos, the murder mystery at its heart swiftly becoming an uninhibited farce.
Without a doubt, The Play That Goes Wrong has got something very right and its brand of silliness offers the ideal tonic to throw off any post- Covid weariness.
