Saturday off the Couch… at “The Play that Goes Wrong”

The Play that Goes Wrong is Wonderfully Right

For two hours of gleeful mayhem it is hard to beat The Play that Goes Wrong. Brought to Australia by Mischief Theatre, the play is an ensemble piece of Australian actors. It has won three major awards in England and on Broadway.

The Play That Goes Wrong is in the best traditions of English farce. It stemmed from The Coarse Acting Show. Incidentally, I saw a scene from this at the Broken Hill Theatre Festival in 1983. It is very hard to act badly deliberately and make the audience laugh. At the same festival, another group did act badly unintentionally and both plays received the same uproarious response. But, I digress.

Publicity compares the show to Noises Off and Fawlty Towers. More like Noises Off than Fawlty Towers.

The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society is to perform ‘Murder at Havisham Manor’, a 1920s murder mystery.

Just looking at the stage before the show starts, you can see the possibilities for mishaps, but this play takes it beyond expectations.

There are props misplaced, cues missed, prompts given wrongly, actors knocked out cold, lines read by stagehands. In fact, anything that can go wrong theatrically, does. An audience favourite is the lighting man, Trevor.

I am always in awe of actors for the amount of long complex script they can learn. And this script is complex as it at times illogical, deliberately. This play requires all actors to be physically fit and acrobatic. Full marks to stage hands who manage the dangerous manoeuvres required.

This play is fun. Well, the tall man in front of me didn’t think so. He left at half time.

The play is touring Australia during 2017, visiting Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane, not necessarily in that order. I saw it at the beautiful Comedy Theatre in Melbourne.

If you enjoy farce, leave your couch one Saturday and take yourself along to see The Play that Goes Wrong.

For your chance to win one of six pairs of ‘A’ Reserve tickets to The Play That Goes Wrong in your nearest capital city, click here.