The Play That Goes Wrong

The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, after being forced by a lack of personnel to stage scaled-down productions such as Two Sisters, The Lion and The Wardrobe, Cat, and James and the Peach, has received a substantial bequest and is putting on a performance of The Murder at Haversham Manor – a 1920s murder mystery play, similar to The Mousetrap, which has the right number of parts for its members. The cast is headed by Chris Bean, who plays Inspector Carter and serves as the show's director, set designer, costume designer, props maker, box office manager, press and PR person, voice and dialect coach, and fight choreographer.

Before the play starts the backstage staff makes last-minute adjustments to the set, including trying to mend a broken mantelpiece and find a dog that has run off.

During the performance, a plethora of disasters befalls the actors, including doors sticking or failing to stay closed, loose floorboards, set pieces falling, and platforms collapsing. Cast members fall down, are struck by set pieces, misplace and break props, forget lines, miss cues, break character, drink white spirit instead of Scotch whisky, mispronounce words, step on fingers, are hidden in a grandfather clock, and are manhandled off stage. One cast member is knocked unconscious, and her replacement (the group's technician reading the lines from a script) refuses to yield when the actress returns. An actor repeats an earlier line of dialogue, cuing the other actors to repeat the whole dialogue sequence, ever more frenetically, several times. During intermission, a few of the actors will interact directly with patrons in the lobby as Bean desperately tries to corral them back into the dressing room. In the climax, virtually the whole of the remaining set collapses.

The play's creators later collaborated on two television specials, an adaptation of Peter Pan Goes Wrong and a sequel titled A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, aired on BBC One in December 2016 and 2017.^[33][34]

A TV series, The Goes Wrong Show, followed in 2019.^[35][36] In December 2019, a full series of The Goes Wrong Show was broadcast featuring 6 episodes^[37][38][39] with the same cast as the other two TV specials. Each episode was said to have received an average of 2.2 million people watching it when broadcast.^[40]

Following the success of the first series, the BBC commissioned a second series which premiered its first episode on 27 September 2021.^{[citation needed]}

The Play That Goes Wrong received positive reviews. Tim Walker of The Telegraph gave it four out of five stars, calling it "a great-looking, brilliantly performed piece" and stated that "I have seldom, if ever, heard louder or more sustained laughter in a theatre."^[41] Mark Shenton of the London Theatre gave it four out of five stars, stating that though the play would not appeal to everyone, "you cannot fail to admire the ceaseless energy of the cast", and shared that "the real surprise is just how well-sustained the joke is."^[42]

Sarah Hemming of the Financial Times gave the play four out of five stars, noting its shared lineage with plays such as Noises Off and stated that "It's not new then, but it is often very funny." Though she found areas in the play that needed improvement ("it would be funnier if it started more subtly, rather than at full tilt.... The company could also make more of offstage dynamics"), she considered the play to be "largely a joyous show."^[43]

The Play That Goes Wrong has been translated and licensed for productions in over 30 other countries, namely Canada, China, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Greece, Israel, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Iceland, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Kosovo, Belgium, The Netherlands, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Chile, Turkey, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, Portugal (UAU), Croatia, Russia, India (Natak na Natak nu Natak by Sharman Joshi Productions), (Play that goes wrong by Prathmesh Viveki), Cyprus, and the Czech Republic.^[44]