Hull New Theatre until 26th May 2018
Reviewed by Catherine McWilliams
5*****
My throat feels hoarse, my sides are aching, my face muscles are feeling tight and my eyes are sore but I’m not complaining, as the cause is the wonderful night out that I have just had at Hull New Theatre watching Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong, and like the rest of the packed theatre laughing like a drain! I really cannot remember hooting with laughter like I have tonight, I literally had tears of laughter running down my face and was very grateful that I had not put any mascara on.
The play centres around the performance of “Murder at Haversham Manor” by “Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society”, a performance that the Director of the Society is hoping will be their best yet as their track record is slightly lacking. The cast valiantly do their best to carry on regardless of the difficulties they face as things go awry. Imagine the worst thing that could go wrong and it is probably happens, from moving corpses to mispronounced words to malfunctioning scenery, all with hilarious consequences.
The cast are quite frankly stunning playing their parts to perfection, and making it appear as though these mishaps are genuine accidents, just pure genius. Their timing was superb as mishap after mishap occurred and turned into near disaster, quite how there were no real accidents is beyond me! There were points when the entire audience gasped with horror at the scenery problems or the accidents to the actors but in a few seconds were howling with laughter again. The set design by Nigel Hook, was incredible in the way all the bits fitted together or rather fell apart!
The cast had the foibles of amateur actors down to a T and were all appropriately over the top. Bobby Hirston as Max (playing Cecil Haversham) clearly a first time performer just loving the attention and reacting to the audience; Benjamin McMahon as Dennis playing Perkins the butler having all the attributes of the old retainer and Elena Valentine as Sandra making a superbly flirty Florence Colleymore.
If you want to come away from the theatre with a huge grin on your face then The Play that Goes Wrong is for you. Laughter they say is the best medicine and this play will make you feel so much better than when you arrived at the theatre.
The Play That Goes Wrong is simply perfect in its imperfections – a right good night out.