REVIEW: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG

SALISBURY PLAYHOUSE

Inspired by Michael Frayn’s hilarious and original Noises Off – a comedy about an am-dram comedy Nothing On – being shambolically performed, this 2014 play concerns the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society putting on a 1920s mystery – Murder At Haversham Manor.

This Olivier Award-winning West End success is now enjoying a major national tour, demonstrating humour on many levels including farce, slapstick, and delicious dramatic irony.

Even before the play starts, the audience is being gently accosted by actors and stage-hands looking for a stage-dog which has gone missing, and wondering if an audience member might play its part ...

And as the stage set begins to disintegrate, stage-hands persuade an audience member to fix the damage ...

Among 12 superb actors, Patrick Warner is outstanding as the supercilious theatre director and the distraught police inspector.

The Mischief Theatre writers team of Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, combined with creative set designer Nigel Hook have produced this exciting physical comedy of split-second timing, raucous farce, and ambitious daring, as the stage set graphically malfunctions and dramatically falls apart.

Unfortunately, the slapstick is occasionally slow and tedious, the gags are sometimes repetitive, and the characters’ frenetic and deliberate over-acting tends to pall ... but that’s the delightful nature of amateur dramatics.

Runs until Saturday.

Currently touring the UK and Ireland, visiting Southampton Mayflower Theatre from July 10-15.

Brendan McCusker