The Arts Club Theatre Company’s 2025-2026 season is brought to a close with the riotous long-running West-End comedy, The Play That Goes Wrong. Written by the award-winning Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, and Jonathan Sayer of the Mischief Theatre Company, it comes to The Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island under the tight direction of Josh Epstein.
Following its productions of The Merry Wife of Windsor, Come from Close By, Cold and Ugly and The Beast, the visiting Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s opens this production of The Murder at Haversham Manor – a 1920s country-house murder mystery play, similar to The Mousetrap – selected because, like its other productions, it had the right number of parts for the society’s players.
An immersive theatre experience, the production begins when the doors open, the audience finds the stage crew making last-minute adjustments of props and fixing the set’s pieces, and fixing again. Realizing that these too, are players breaking the 4th wall, the audience realizes its own part to play – that of the audience of The Murder at Haversham Manor.
To the audience’s delight, and the company’s shame, the Cornley Drama Society cast and crew greatly overestimates their abilities, resulting in an avalanche of calamity throughout the production. In their bumbling efforts to be a serious amateur dramatics troupe, they unwittingly combine two great English theatre traditions; the grand country-house mystery, and a classic farce.
With a play within the play, most of the cast of comedic geniuses must perform double-duty as both the Cornley company as well as The Murder at Haversham Manor characters. The cast includes; Praneet Akilla as Chris Bean Cornley’s Creative Director and Inspector Carter, Scott Bellis as Dennis and Perkins, Zander Eke as Max, Cecil Haversham and Arthur, Ben Elliott as Jonathan and Charles Haversham, Genevieve Fleming as Sandra and Florence Colleymoore, Andrew McNee as Robert and Thomas Colleymoore (Florence’s brother). The Cornley technical crew are Pedro M. Almeida-Siqueira, Alexandra Lainfiesta, Marco Walker-Ng (also serving as Fight Captain), Argel Monte de Ramos as Trevor the unreliable lighting & sound technician and Kelli Ogmundson as Annie the stage manager who fills in for an absent Sandra.
In addition to delightfully comical dialogue, the cast are brilliantly adept at physical comedy, adlibs and terrific timing to work amongst the superb set, designed by Ryan Cormack. The catastrophic country house set plays such an integral part of the show, the “Goes Wrong” in the title can be mostly attributed to the precise coordination between the actors and the set and props literally collapsing around them. Jessica Oostergo’s equally costumes must maintain their Victorian aesthetic while being durable enough to withstand the rigors of the slapstick comedy.
While audience members were overheard claiming “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s funny”, it’s not really vital, and is indeed difficult, to follow a plot. Instead, just sit back and enjoy the outrageously knee-slapping, gut-busting sight gags, pratfalls and general chaos that flows so freely from the cast of Cornley Polytechnic creators’ as they present The Murder at Haversham Manor.
The Arts Club Theatre Company’s The Play That Goes Wrong runs until August 106, 2026 at The Lindsay Family Stage at Granville Island, 1585 Johnstone Street. If the packed opening night is any indication, you must get your tickets soon, visit artsclub.com for tickets, special events and more information. You may want to see it twice, to catch what you missed while uncontrollably laughing.