Show review by Steve Bennett

No prizes for guessing what happens in The Play That Goes Wrong. Tapping into that fine, foolish heritage of missed cues, lost props and bungled lines that includes Noises Off, Acorn Antiques and Fringe favourite Bad Play – plus countless more besides – this is what happens when the wheels come flying off a polytechnic am dram group’s earnest attempt at a mannered drawing-room whodunit.

The farce’s driving force is the old adage ‘the show must go on...’ and amid a fast-swirling maelstrom of chaos ruining their attempts at The Murder at Haversham Manor, the fictional actors must stand fast, covering over the snafus and pretending all is going entirely to plan. ‘Delivery your lines and don’t walk into the furniture,’ is the actors’ maxim... well, they achieve at least the first half of that, regardless of whether circumstances have rendered the script ridiculous.

And when the fictional thespians try to extricate themselves from the pandemonium, it inevitably sows the seeds for escalating bedlam. Mischief Theatre may be predominantly known as improvisers – it was they who performed the first spontaneous TV ad last month – but here the script, written by three of the cast, is tight and inventive enough to ensure what might have been a one-gag idea sustains the hour. Although the build-up is hardly subtle – it’s full-on catastrophe from the very first entrance – the team manage to ramp up the stakes without quite seeming desperate.

Such hammy slapstick relies on performance; and here it is as vigorously ribald as you could hope, even if it draws on great comics who have gone before. There’s more than a touch of the John Cleese in Henry Shields’s vein-popping portrayal of the actor behind the police inspector, trying desperately to hide his violent impatience at the incompetence that surrounds him. Dave Hearn endears with the fact his character can’t disguise his glee when the audience likes him; while as the femme fatale, Charlie Russell channels the lusty, overacting spirit of Rik Mayall in his Flashheart prime. Plus she endures some of the most brutal, but hilariously, physical indignities at the hands of her castmates.

That’s possibly the intervention of director Mark Bell, who trained at the Jacques Lecoq school that’s produced such comic-clowns as Sacha Baron Cohen and Dr Brown, willing to sacrifice dignity for a laugh. There’s certainly plenty of physical comedy packed into this hour, and the audience are quick to get into the Knockabout spirit (including the man who snuck out halfway through by walking across the stage) – which is surely why it has extended its run at London’s Trafalgar Studio before heading to Edinburgh.

The characters might be shallow, and the on-stage disasters too stupidly contrived to be credible, but there’s a huge amount of high-spirited fun to be had here. It’s so wrong it’s right...

Review date: 3 Jul 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Trafalgar Studios