BWW Reviews: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG, Trafalgar Studios, May 7 2013

Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society haven't had a lot of luck in the past - their Two Sisters needed a significant re-writing of Chekhov's original and their panto - Snow White and the Two Broad Gentlemen - lost in plotting what it gained in political correctness. Undeterred, the poshest poly students and staff I've ever heard are putting on The Murder at Haversham Manor - a play with a plot seemingly based on an episode of Scooby Doo. Like one of Baldrick's poems, it starts badly, tails off a little in the middle and the less said about the end, the better.

Drawing inspiration from Morecambe and Wise's Christmas Show party piece (Ernie's play "what I wrote" in which deathless dialogue would be delivered by increasingly exasperated thespians like Glenda Jackson and Diana Rigg) this format has long roots in TV comedy. With a nod to Basil Fawlty, Father Dougal and even Buster Keaton, Mischief Theatre deconstruct - literally, the set falls apart - the Am-Dram drawing room mystery for laughs. And the laughs keep coming, with lines forgotten, props mislaid, comatose actors hauled off stage through windows and a stretcher that doesn't quite stretch enough - and plenty, plenty more.

Director Mark Bell hasn't been afraid of turning the farce up to 11. Lotti Maddox and Nancy Wallinger take a terrible battering before fighting each other for the spotlight as the female lead. Henry Shields and Jonathan Sayer lay the ham on thick as the cookie cutter detective and butler and Dave Hearn is particularly winning when accepting applause with a little bow mid-scene. There's no straight man amongst the cast of eight, even the lighting operator seizes his moment.

Humour is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but, delivered at a frenetic pace all-through in just over an hour, nobody has time to tire of the antics, as the front row stay just out of the firing line with liquids and props flung about with abandon. Nor is there time to ponder why somebody didn't intervene - I mean someone had to! It's a relief to see that all the cast survived their ordeals physically - whether they survived mentally is another matter altogether. Cornley Poly's Counselling Service may be rather busier than expected just now.

The Play That Goes Wrong continues at Trafalgar Studios until 18 May.

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