The Play That Goes Wrong

The Play That Goes Wrong at Spencer Theatre At Kansas City Repertory Theatre

A murder mystery where the corpse won't stay dead and the furniture has its own agenda feels like watching someone try to hold a sneeze during a wedding vow—delightful precisely because decorum is doomed from the start.

The Play That Goes Wrong brings the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society's disastrous production of The Murder at Haversham Manor to Kansas City, where amateur theatrical ambition collides spectacularly with collapsing scenery and forgotten cues. Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, this physical comedy doesn't just tell a 1920s whodunit—it watches that polished mystery crumble as an unstable set and missed lines turn every dignified moment into chaos.

The pleasure doubles because you're tracking two stories at once. There's the fictional murder plot the performers are desperately trying to present, complete with drawing-room suspects and genteel accusations. Then there's the real-time theatrical meltdown as doors refuse to open, actors scramble to cover mistakes, and a victim who should remain perfectly still keeps ruining his own death scene. Director Stuart Carden stages this carefully constructed disaster at the Spencer Theatre, where the contrast between what should happen and what actually does becomes its own kind of clockwork comedy.

Every stumble is scripted, every misplaced prop intentional. The joke isn't that these people can't perform—it's that they won't give up, even as the production unravels around them.

Grab your tickets through Kansas City Repertory Theatre.