The premise of this show is the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society attempting to perform a 1920s murder mystery called ‘The Murder at Haversham Manor’. Everything that can go wrong does, starting with missing props and mis-built scenery then escalating into mis-timed cues, doors that refuse to open, actors knocked unconscious, understudies shoved on who do not know the lines, collapsing platforms, ruined sound cues and finally near total structural failure of the set, and through all this the cast insist on continuing the performance with brittle amateur earnestness, so the whodunnit barely registers and the true story becomes the mounting physical destruction and the group’s increasingly desperate attempts to finish the show at any cost.
The problem here is not the concept. The problem is fatigue. The jokes that once felt anarchic now feel like theme-park animatronics. A collapsing mantlepiece is no longer surprising when you are waiting for it to collapse in precisely the way it has every other night for 10 years. The technology is basic, reminiscent of a production 50 years old.
Any sensation of danger is absent. The audience is always safe. The chaos is always cosmetic. The play keeps winking at you to laugh at mistakes that never feel like mistakes. It delivers choreography not farce. You never forget that everything is pre-rigged to collapse at second X on cue Y.
Individual performers do what they can. You can sense the actors fighting the rhythm of a show that no longer has rhythm. Yet it continues to pack the house most nights, so it must be doing something right, even if this reviewer couldn’t spot it.
This show has surrendered its spirit. It feels like corporate slapstick sold to tourists, a slick machine that has been running far too long, or a cheap knockoff of the classic Noises Off. For newcomers who have never seen the show before, there may be a handful of laughs. For anybody who has seen Mischief Theatre at its best, this long-running and commercially successful show is weak. The only thing that truly goes wrong now is the lack of surprise.
