The Play That Goes Wrong

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

A dignified 1920s drawing-room murder mystery demands poise, precision and a body that stays convincingly dead. The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society has none of these things. When this doomed amateur theater troupe tackles the fictional whodunit The Murder at Haversham Manor, every element that should anchor a proper mystery—the manor setting, the carefully planted clues, the dramatic corpse—becomes ammunition for disaster.

Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong builds its comedy on two colliding layers: the earnest 1920s murder plot the performers are trying to deliver and the escalating chaos they can't control. An unstable set refuses to cooperate. Furniture betrays its users. Lines vanish from memory at the worst possible moments. The victim meant to lie still keeps moving. Each attempt to salvage the show only accelerates the breakdown, and the contrast between what these actors intend and what actually happens fuels the farce.

Stuart Carden directs this physical comedy at Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Spencer Theatre, where the Cornley players' struggles unfold through scripted mishaps that reward close attention. You're watching a mystery and watching that mystery fall apart, and both spectacles deliver.

Get tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong at Kansas City Repertory Theatre in Kansas City.