Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford – until 13th August 2022
Reviewed by Heather Chalkley
5*****
Core to Mischief are award winning writing trio Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields. Running for 10 years now, The Play that Goes Wrong has not lost its edge. Set in the 1920’s this is a timeless murder mystery play within a play, with a hefty serving of slap stick, that even The Three Stooges would enjoy performing.
The stressed and earnest producer and lead actor of Murder at Haversham Manor, Chris Bean (Colin Burnicle) cleverly engages with the audience, creating more laughs in his attempt at gaining sympathy. We are on Bean’s hilarious emotional roller coaster, ranging across tears, anger, desperation, relief and gratitude! The interplay with the stagehands, Beth Lilly (Annie) and Gabriel Paul (Trevor) is genius – it takes skill to act as woodenly at that! All the devices a novice actor employs are included, like Dennis (Damien James) writing key words of his script on his hand and still pronouncing them wrong! The physical performance of Aisha Numah (Sandra) with over acted poses and being pulled through the window upside down and sideways was impressive! The balcony, serving as the view on to the second storey offers excellent moments of perfect timing and physical comedy, particularly by Kazeem Tosin Amore (Robert), as he keeps hold of several pieces of furniture and a huge pot plant on an ever dipping floor.
All the players give a fantastic display of on point slap stick. This is thanks to a creative team that perfectly time things going wrong on set, right from the opening scene. In these difficult times this is a play to escape to and belly laugh like there is no tomorrow!