A Small Mind At The Theatre

It is scary to contemplate that it is almost four years since I first saw Mischief Theatre's The Play That Goes Wrong . It is no secret that on that night I enjoyed it quite a bit (and ended up on stage, but that is another story). I returned the next evening to watch it again and then stalked it down to London later that same year, which over three years later it continues its remarkable West End success story. Since my last encounter with this original, I have seen Chris Bean's ramshackle Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society create chaos on stage and television with Peter Pan Goes Wrong , mess-up Dickens' A Christmas Carol and even gatecrash BBC Radio at Christmas. This fourth encounter with the original The Play That Goes Wrong though, offers the opportunity to see it in the hands of a different cast for the first time. How can pretenders of the original creators shape up in this anarchic disaster of a play? Actually, as it turns out remarkably well. It is true that ...

With the small matter of three viewings of The Play That Goes Wrong and a viewing of Peter Pan Goes Wrong behind me, it is safe to say that I am sold on the genius of the performers of Mischief Theatre. Lights! Camera! Improvise! was safe to say going to a rip roaring affair I was certain, I expected nothing less from them. I got nothing less, indeed it was even better than I anticipated. The format is that the audience on the night has the task of selecting the genres for an imagined film production directed by Oscar (Jonathan Sayer). This selection itself is a comic masterpiece as many of the audience are fully into the swing of the idea and par off with their host superbly, although Sayer always has the upper hand with the put downs. Even if on the night he still reluctantly ended up with "Yiddish" as a genre and the wonderful "The Worm That Turned" as the films title title. I am glad we did, because the team of wonders worked magic with the subject which had a...

On the first of March 2014 I attended a play at the Royal & Derngate for the first time in twenty-one years (Sylvester McCoy starring in the The Invisible Man). It was a tremendous neglect on my part that my hometown's theatre had been ignored for so long. During that time my theatre visits had consisted of sporadic (but expensive) trips to London. A Tale Of Two Cities on Saturday 1st March totally changed that. Well not totally maybe, perhaps the wonder of A Body Of An American on Thursday 6th made a bigger impact. However show by show the momentum built until I found myself coming quite often. Well very often in fact. It also had a spin-off effect, so just as I had found R&D, I found other worlds within my town. I found University students performing at the Holy Sepulchre. I found the amateur Masque Theatre performing at the same venue. I found the Errol Flynn showing plays from London. I found the Looking Glass Theatre via the University shows for the Flash Theatre ...

Having seen Mischief Theatre's phenomenal The Play That Goes Wrong three times last year, there was a strange and uncomfortable feeling at the start of Peter Pan Goes Wrong for me. Creators Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields have come up with such a well defined collection of characters, complete with their own personal foibles (and indeed desires), that it felt sacrilege to see different people playing them. For my three viewings last year, I had been privileged to see the original cast on all occasions, so who on earth was that person playing stage manager Trevor (actually Chris Leask)? Causing the usual pre-show mayhem (this time right in front of my row), he acted and sounded the same yes, but he looked, just different. Then who on earth is this guy pretending to be director Chris Bean? However this was my own foible because once the onstage chaos began, none of it mattered, as once again myself and the audience were carried away in a chaotic, blistering and immens...

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...