Review: The Play That Goes Wrong

If you're the kind of spectator who watches motor racing for the crashes, horse racing for the falls and diving for the belly flops, you are probably the kind of theatregoer who gets immense satisfaction out of a play that goes wrong. Clearly, I am.

This one is a murder mystery with a country house set and a whodunnit plot. It's performed by hapless amateurs who, according to the earnest director (Henry Shields), who also plays the detective, are only in the West End due to a clerical error that has also resulted in the RSC playing the Cornley Polytechnic Gymnasium, which is where the college's drama society normally perform. Everything that can go wrong here does.

I assumed I was immune to the kind of simple comedy that relies on actors drying up, pratfalls and a disintegrating set.

But Mischief Theatre's version of this neglected kind of farce - directed with clockwork precision by Mark Bell - is so committed to the genre it reaches an irresistible climax of calamity that propelled me from sullen silence, via reluctant giggle to outright laughter.