Some plays start small and gather momentum through the power of word of mouth. The Play That Goes Wrong is one of these. A friend saw it at Trafalgar Studios and raved about it. Partly because she and her husband become the butt of the one of the jokes.
So, by way of a warm-up to a series of local am-dram shows we regularly attend, we booked our tickets at Oxford Playhouse. From the opening line to the last, the audience was served up a real treat of the often calamitous rehearsal and staging process of an amateur dramatic production.
Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong: despite the expensive set the usual travails suffered by local groups occur when the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society decides to put on The Murder at Haversham Manor.
Anyone who has ever seen or performed in an amateur production will recognise the long pauses, the wrong music cue and the dodgy sets, but the real trick this great cast pulls off, is how to make it go wrong so successfully!
Written by Henry Shields, Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer, who formed the Mischief Theatre Company after leaving LAMDA, this little gem is sure to run and run.