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The play that goes wrong
Belgrade Theatre***** Mischief
Theatre quite literally brought the house down with
The Play that Goes Wrong! It started in chaos,
ended in chaos and the middle was quite chaotic too. But, oh so funny!
It was in the finest tradition of
You’ve been framed, Michael Frayn’s
Noises Off
and the Portsmouth Symphonia.
You might have caught
Mischief’s version of Peter Pan on television at Christmas.
The Play that Goes Wrong
is also slapstick, knockabout comedy and the audience was more than
tickled, it was convulsed! One lady at the end of our row laughed all
the way through. The drama started before we reached the
auditorium. Winston the Springer Spaniel has gone missing and the stage
crew, Trevor (Graeme Rooney) and Annie (Katie Bernstein), ask for our
help in the search. The story, such as it
is, concerns the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s production of
Murder at Haversham Manor.
Charles Haversham (Jason Callender) is dead in the library – well, maybe
not that dead. Inspector Carter (Patrick Warner) arrives with little
clue – or little clue who might have perpetrated the heinous crime. Was
it fiancee flighty Florence Colleymore ( Meg Mortell) or her jealous
brother Thomas Colleymore (Edward Judge)? Or Charles’ brother, stage
struck Cecil (Alastair Kirton) in love with Flighty Florrie? Or maybe
Perkins (Edward Howells) the butler. ‘Problems with props’ could easily be the
subtitle, since most of the heightened drama comes out of mischievous
props: telephone cables are too short, nothing stays on the wall for
long, whole sections of wall fall on poor actors. There’s a Buster
Keaton moment that did look as though it went wrong for real when a wall
fell on poor Perkins and it must have hurt. The supreme set itself was so shaky that I
suspected that it murdered Charles on its own! It was a Health and
Safety nightmare! Inspector Carter was head butted by a heraldic shield,
a door was opened too enthusiastically and polished off not one but two
Flighty Florries. Yes, Annie, over-worked prop controller, had to take
over when original Florrie was knocked out and far-from-surreptitiously
(and indecorously) removed through the ‘window’. In short, it’s a hoot. Anyway, whodunit? There’s
a twist to end all twists which knocks The Mousetrap into a cocked hat .
. . directed by Mark Bell, the play will be going wrong until 28-01-17 Jane Howard 23-01-17 The play continues on tour and will be going wrong at Wolverhampton Grand 3-8 April. |
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