The Play That Goes Wrong Reviews: What the Critics Say
It opened at the Duchess Theatre in September 2014, having started in a sixty-seat room above a pub. Seven months later it won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, and it has been running ever since.
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The Critics' Verdict
Star ratings ran from three to five. Five from the Daily Mail. Four from the Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Independent and The Stage. Three from WhatsOnStage and Time Out. One national, The Times, was unconvinced.
It went on to win Best New Comedy at both the Olivier Awards and the WhatsOnStage Awards, and in 2017 Nigel Hook won a Tony Award for the set.
The Telegraph's Tim Walker called it "delightful" and opened his review with the admission that only once before had he been "reduced to a helpless, wobbly jelly in a theatre, barely able to keep my posterior upon my seat".
What the Reviews Praised
The laughter in the room, which several critics measured rather than described. Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail wrote that "at one point I feared I was going to hyperventilate" (5/5). Walker reported that he had "seldom, if ever, heard louder or more sustained laughter" (4/5).
The set, and this is the one point on which every critic agreed. Even The Times, the least impressed of them, called Nigel Hook's manor-house design "a masterpiece of elegant malfunction. You have to build something incredibly well to ensure it can collapse quite so dependably." It won the Tony three years later.
The precision underneath the chaos. The Financial Times' Sarah Hemming called it "largely a joyous show" (4/5). The Independent described "exquisitely choreographed mayhem" (4/5).
The comparison that stuck. WhatsOnStage's Michael Coveney summed the evening up as though "The Mousetrap has been taken over by Monty Python" (3/5).
One critic called the run. Philip Fisher in the British Theatre Guide wrote in 2014 that "this one really could run for ever".
Where Reviews Were Mixed
The main criticism was that nothing is at stake. The Times' Dominic Maxwell found it "all punchline and no set-up" and wrote that it "goes from amusing to wearying with surprising speed". His comparison was with Noises Off, which is funny because the cast are frantically trying to stop their show falling apart. Here, he wrote, "it starts bad, it carries on bad, it ends bad. Nothing is at stake."
Two other critics reached for the same comparison. Time Out noted that anyone who knows and loves Noises Off is likely to find this the lesser thing, and the Guardian's Lyn Gardner had made the same point reviewing the earlier, shorter version in 2013.
Length came up more than once. The Evening Standard's Fiona Mountford found the doors that will not open and the missed cues "somehow never not funny", while noting that "it's not sophisticated and it's certainly over-extended; the show's one-act Fringe origins aren't hard to spot". Coveney called it "undiluted, unapologetic sketch theatre, very well done in its way" (3/5).
Audiences have been warmer than the critics. Across hundreds of verified reviews from people who booked and went, it averages around four and a half out of five, and it has been running since 2014.
Is The Play That Goes Wrong Right for You?
You'll have a great night if:
- You just want to laugh for two hours and think about nothing else. That is what the critics who loved it wrote about, and it is what the audience reviews keep saying too.
- You're bringing someone who does not really do theatre. Nothing to know beforehand, nothing to get, and no interest in whether you have seen anything else.
- You've got children of eight or over. The humour is physical rather than verbal, so it lands for the whole table and not just the grown-ups.
- English isn't your first language. It is doors, props and falling scenery, so very little of it depends on the words.
- You've ever been in an am-dram production. Half the joke is how accurate it is.
You might want something else if you like a farce with real tension in it. The critics who marked it down all wanted the feeling that the cast might yet rescue the evening, and this show simply is not interested in that. It is a machine for laughs and it is honest about being one.
Not sure? Call us on 020 7193 9050 and we will tell you straight whether it suits the group you are booking for.
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Sources
The Times · The Daily Telegraph · Daily Mail · Financial Times · The Independent · The Stage · Evening Standard · WhatsOnStage · Time Out · The Guardian