Skip to main content

Review of The Play That Goes Wrong at the Duchess Theatre, London

A play has to be doing something right if you go to see it three times, the third of which involves travelling to London to do so. Either its superb, or this viewer is a little weird. Fortunately we have the situation where both of those statements are correct.

The Play That Goes Wrong is nothing short of one of the funniest plays, indeed anything you could ever wish to see. Having seen it twice in Northampton in two days, the opportunity to see it in the big city and its new home (maybe for sometime to come?) at the Duchess Theatre was too much to miss.

With its new home in the capital came an added confidence from the show. If anything it felt more solid, funnier, and more polished. It certainly hadn't settled on its laurels of its huge touring success. There were a selection of added jokes, slightly bolder staging moments and a slightly increased interplay with the hysterical audience.

I have had the pleasure of seeing over 50 plays this year and there is no question that this has been the one that the audience has responded the greatest to. People of all ages have laughed as one at this show and what I have also seen is the willingness of family trips for this show. This play drifts effortlessly across the generations with its audience. I have sat in rows with mother and daughter, grandfathers and grandsons like no other I have seen.

Your dear writer also took that bold step of taking his father to see the play. He who had not been in a theatre for years (decades in fact). This is a play that has no embarrassment, no bad language (well certainly a façade of no bad language), nothing that would make you squirm as you sat next to your father, mother or granny.

The cast of ten from Mischief Theatre are nothing short of sublime. Their timing, their performances, simply everything is manna from heaven. There are no famous faces here (not yet), just a cast of unknowns who create a show that a bevy of award winners would envy in the extreme.

Tonight sees the press night for the play and there is no question that this show will get a shed load of fives stars. There is absolutely no reason that given the chance, you should see this show. In fact never mind given a chance, you need to see it. Perhaps if you have never been to the theatre ever, or for a long time, this should be the one you should see. Although I must warn you, you may have to wait for a while to see a funnier show.

Rating 5/5 - A chaotic feast of hilarious delight.

Performance reviewed: Thursday 11th September, 2014 at the Duchess Theatre, London.

For my original review of The Play That Goes Wrong click here.

Popular posts from this blog

Review of The Rocky Horror Show at Milton Keynes Theatre

Richard O’Brien’s anarchic, surreal, and often incomprehensible musical, The Rocky Horror Show , has captivated audiences for over fifty years now. With this new tour, it feels as fresh and unpredictable as if it had just emerged from O’Brien's vivid imagination yesterday. While another review might seem unnecessary given the countless dressed-up fans who fill every theatre it visits, let’s go ahead and write one anyway. The Rocky Horror Show follows the adventures of Brad and Janet, a newly engaged couple. On a dark and stormy November evening, they run into car trouble and seek refuge at a mysterious castle reminiscent of Frankenstein’s. There, they encounter the eccentric handyman Riff-Raff, the outrageous scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter, and a host of other bizarre characters. What unfolds is a science fiction B-movie narrative that is at times coherent and at other times bewildering — yet somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter. I first saw The Rocky Horror Show in 2019 and exper...

Review of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband at The Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

During the interval of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband , last weeks production at The Playhouse Theatre Northampton, I got involved in a conversation between a couple sitting next to me. The lady was very much of the opinion that the play was a comedy, while the gentleman, had formed one that it was a tragedy. They were joking of course in the conversation, but it did highlight the differences that Debbie Isitt's dark comedy might have between the sexes. And also now perhaps the passing of time. When this was written in the nineties, Isitt's play was a forthright feminist play, heralding the championing over of the ladies over the man. One the ex-wife plotting to cook him, the other, the new lover, potentially already very tired of him after just three years. The husband, Kenneth (Jem Clack) elopes initially in pursuit of sex with Laura (Diane Wyman), after his nineteen years of marriage with Hilary (Corinna Leeder) has become tired and passionless. Then later, he elopes ...

Review of Dial M For Mayhem! at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Middle Ground Theatre has been creating unique and intrepid adventures for the stage since the late eighties, and with Dial M For Mayhem! , they take those experiences and bring to the stage a brand new play within a play now arriving for a week run at Royal & Derngate. Written by Margaret May Hobbs and directed by Michael Lunney, Dial M For Mayhem! has much to admire. Still, sadly, for every good joke, amusing set piece and chaotic moment, there are too many periods of flatness, stilted sequences and, especially during the first act, too many slow scenes which either tread the same old ground or bring nothing new to the proceedings and then fail to flow into the next leaving it often disjointed. The cast does their very best, though, and the characters they bring to the stage are entertaining and perfect for this farcical play, but they lack depth despite the script trying desperately at times to give them one. The attempt to create character also comes at the expense of the farc...