THERE are problems even before the curtain has risen with Trevor from the production team searching the auditorium for missing dog Winston, a key player in Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s ambitious - some might say, justifiably, over-ambitious - production of the Agatha Christie style whodunit Murder at Haversham Manor.

The Play That Goes Wrong was the first play from Mischief Theatre that mines a rich vein of comedy for a rich vein of comedy - the sort of humour that happens when things go amiss on stage. We all love it when things don’t go as planned, whether it’s a missed cue, forgotten line or a prop malfunctioning.

This play has all those and more. Never in the history of theatre-making have so many things gone wrong so often - with immensely amusing effect. Rarely has a cast worked so frantically, so frenetically, so well for laughs as the set literally falls apart around them.

The plot, like the leading lady, is thrown out the window as the society’s director, designer, costume designer, prop maker, box office manager, press & PR person, dramaturg, dialect coach, fight choreographer and leading man Chris Bean (Jake Curran) fights an uphill battle (literally as an upstairs room collapses around him) to get the show on the road. Alas, it proves a very inroad-worthy vehicle.

The timing of the cast is impeccable, the laughs come thick and fast, and Monday’s opening night audience at the Grand Opera House absolutely roared with laughter. But they never did find Winston the dog.

Raymond Crisp