The Play That Goes Wrong

What's your deep down secret laugh? Like, when something nails you right in the humours out of nowhere and you make a sound people might describe as 'unflattering'.

You don't need to tell us, but if you're uncomfortable taking that noise out in public you might need to give The Play That Goes Wrong a miss. In it, The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are putting on The Murder At Haversham Manor and, true to the title, things go downhill quicker than a greased pig on a Slip N’ Slide. Forgotten lines, a beleaguered and overactive corpse, Duran Duran, actors breaking character and the set, a mantelpiece that steals the show and then won't give up the script, Trevor — the list of mishaps is endless and endlessly inventive. Half the fun is guessing where the next catastrophe is coming from and the other half is discovering just how narrow your vision is.

The frenetic pace gets a bit exhausting at points and some of the gags really do make you want to shake your head. But The Play That Goes Wrong is like a shotgun full of boomerangs, it fires off a million things at once and even the ones that seem to miss usually come back and land at some point.

By the end, we don't really know what the hell went down at Haversham Manor, but the audience hardly seemed to care: a woman next to us snorted the whole way through (she had plenty of company) and the bloke behind her chittered like a gibbon. Good times from bad theatre (that's actually pretty darn excellent).

The Play That Goes Wrong is at Melbourne Comedy Theatre until 26 Mar, before touring nationally: 28 Mar — 2 Apr at Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide; 5 — 16 Apr at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney; 25 —  30 Apr at Canberra Theatre; 4 — 14 May at QPAC, Brisbane; 31 May — 11 Jun at His Majesty's Theatre, Perth.