The Play That Goes Wrong

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

An unstable set. Furniture that will not cooperate. A victim who struggles to stay dead. The amateur performers have a murder mystery to deliver and an increasingly difficult job keeping it on track. When the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society tackles The Murder at Haversham Manor—a supposedly elegant 1920s whodunit—every curtain rise becomes a test of survival. What begins as polished period mystery unravels into gloriously mounting chaos.

The Play That Goes Wrong turns theatrical disaster into an art form. Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, this physical comedy pits earnest amateur performers against an unstable set that refuses to cooperate. Doors stick. Furniture betrays. Lines vanish from memory at the worst possible moment. The victim himself can't manage to stay convincingly dead. Yet the Cornley players press on, determined to salvage their production even as everything around them disintegrates.

The pleasure lies in watching performers lose control while refusing to abandon ship. The contrast between the dignity these characters believe they're projecting and the catastrophe actually unfolding creates relentless comedy. Panic and pride collide as the company improvises increasingly desperate fixes for problems that multiply faster than they can solve them.

Stuart Carden directs Kansas City Repertory Theatre's production at the Spencer Theatre, where scripted mayhem meets precise timing. This is comedy built on the gap between ambition and reality, where every mishap raises the stakes for characters too committed to quit.

Grab your tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong in Kansas City.