Review: The Play That Goes Wrong is Agatha Christie meets Basil Fawlty

• It’s an amateur theatre production that goes completely off the rails.
• The Play That Goes Wrong is so bad, it’s good.
• Check you brain in at the cloakroom and simply have a jolly good laugh.

It’s slapstick and pantomime all rolled into one. Mr Bean would be right at home on this stage. As would Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther.

The idea is simple. But the humour is irresistible. You simply won’t stop laughing. This is no-brainer territory. In fact, you can check that organ in at the cloakroom. You won’t be needing it.

The Play That Goes Wrong is about The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s attempts to put on a play called  The Murder at Haversham Manor. This is Agatha Christie meets Basil Fawlty. The consequences are dire for your funny bone.

I loved the London Daily Mail critic’s view of this show: “I thought I would hyperventilate”.

If you’ve been involved in amateur theatre, you’ll recognise every character in this cast. It’s pandemonium. Everything that can go wrong does. But the cast won’t be beaten. They soldier on regardless of the mayhem. Sets collapse. Actors collapse. But they just need to get to the end of the show.

The play was written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, who met while studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and sent on to form the Mischief Theatre Company.

The production began life as a one-act play at the Old Red Lion pub theatre in London in 2013. It transferred to a bigger studio theatre, went to the Edinburgh Festival, toured the UK and arrived in the West End in 2014 where it won an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. It’s still playing the West End today.

In its heyday, actors were went out to hand reviewers envelopes with $5 “bribes” inside. It happened in London and New York. Sadly for this reviewer, no bribe in Sydney!

Outside the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House is a sign that states: “Tom Cruise won’t be appearing at this performance. “

Somehow, I think he would have appeared if he had been invited.

Don’t expect sophisticated humour. This is a play where you can leave the woes of 2025 behind and just relax in the knowledge that nothing is going to tax your intellect.

The lines are played for laughs, the scenery collapses, lines are forgotten, the sound technician regular makes a stage appearance and corpses regularly come back to life.

This is not sophisticated humour. But it is humour nonetheless.

Associate Director of the West End and Australian productions, Amy Milburn says: “The Cornley Drama Society playing the Sydney Opera House – well that’s a hilarious thought!

“It’s a cliche but laughter really does bring people together in such an immediate way. The timeless humour in The Play That Goes Wrong has sparked so much joy over the last decade, audiences in 49 countries can testify that it’s a guaranteed good time. We’re thrilled to bring the show and that experience back to Australia, at the country’s most iconic venue no less.”

Presented in agreement with Mischief Worldwide Ltd, co-producers GMG Productions and Stoddart Entertainment Group will bring this wonderfully disastrous tour to life with chaos to abound across Australia. 

The Play that Goes Wrong will appear at the Sydney Opera House from 19 June – 3 August 2025, at HOTA, Gold Coast, from 6 – 10 August 2025, the Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, from 12 – 15 August 2025, the Civic Theatre, Newcastle from 19 – 31 August 2025 and the Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne, from 3 – 21 September 2025.

The Play That Goes Wrong is playing at the Opera House until 3 August.

The Play That Goes Wrong

When: June 19 until August 3, 2025.
Where: Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point NSW 2000.
Price: From $89 + booking fee.