THEATRE REVIEW: The Play That Goes Wrong - The Opera House, Manchester.

Mischief Theatre have done it again! This was now my third time of watching this hilarious and superbly crafted farce, and even though I knew what was going to happen I was still lapping it up and laughing loudly along with everyone else in this evening's appreciative audience at Manchester's Opera House.

What made this particular production just that little bit more special perhaps, was that the 8 main principal characters were the original cast members from the 2012 London production, who are performing this for just two weeks - one here in Manchester, and the second up in Newcastle. They may well be 10 years older now, but their agility, comedy timing, skill, and characterisations were as deft and as sharp as ever. 

The plot is quite simple: The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society perform their production of 'Murder At Haversham Manor'. It is a play within a play. However, as the title suggests, this is pure farce, and everything that could possibly go wrong, does. Actors forget their lines or can't pronounce them properly; props are mislaid and misused; cast manage to either walk into each other or the set, or have the set slammed on them more times than you could say Jack Robinson, and the final sequence - a tribute to a scene in the famous 'Steamboat Bill Jr' (Buster Keaton) - is the cherry on the icing.  

The play starts more or less half an hour before the start of the play! Yes.... that's right. The performance starts at 7:30pm, however, for about 30 minutes prior to this, the cast (of the murder play), and the stage management (of the murder play), come around the audience trying to find the Stage Manager's CD which he has lost, and locate the errant dog which is part of the play. They also find a volunteer from the audience to help with making the final preparations of the set before the play starts! However, your understanding and complicity in all of this (because it is a very large theatre), depends on where the cast go, and what you manage to hear and understand as they come amongst you. 

It was a such a pleasure and indeed a privilege to be able to watch the originators at work: Rob Falconer, Henry Shields, Greg Tannahill, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Charlie Russell, Dave Hearn, and Nancy Zamit. They all worked so well together, you would have thought that they had been doing it non-stop for the last ten years! (Maybe they have!) It was so slick, and side-splittingly funny... it just got better and better the further into the play they went. 

For lovers of slapstick, farce, comedy, and of course damned fine acting from a hugely talented cast. I know, being an actor myself, that it takes more skill to be able to do something deliberately badly than it does to do it well, and these are masters of it! [Think Les Dawson or Morecambe and Wise]. Go and see them while you have the chance!

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 30.5.22