The Play That Goes Wrong, the West End’s Olivier Award winning box office hit, announces a major national tour for 2017. Opening at Theatre Royal Bath on 10 January, the production will visit 30 venues nationwide until the end of July 2017, including Newcastle Theatre Royal, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, The Mercury Theatre Colchester, Cambridge Arts Theatre and Mayflower Theatre Southampton, with further dates to be announced. The West End production also announces a new booking period, with tickets going on sale until 10 September 2017 at the Duchess Theatre, London.
Awarded the 2014 Whatsonstage.com Best New Comedy and the 2015 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, The Play That Goes Wrong is now enjoying its second year in the West End, where it continues to play to sold-out houses. It is a remarkable rags-to-riches story for a play, which started its life at a London fringe venue with only four paying members of the public at the first performance, and has since played to an audience of over a quarter of a million.
The producer Kenny Wax says:
“The Play That Goes Wrong has been licensed to 25 countries, currently playing in Japan, Hungary and Paris – as well as in London. It goes to prove that audiences come to the theatre to be entertained and that the fun to be had in watching brilliantly plotted physical comedy is universal.”
Co-written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong is a highly physical comedy packed with finely-tuned farce and Buster Keaton inspired slapstick delivered with split-second timing and ambitious daring. The play introduces The ‘Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’ who are attempting to put on a 1920s’ murder mystery, but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong… does, as the accident prone thespians battle on against all the odds to get to their final curtain call.
Mischief Theatre was founded in 2008 by a group of graduates of The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and began as an improvised comedy group. Mischief Theatre performs across the UK and internationally with improvised and original scripted work. Their other production The Comedy About A Bank Robbery is currently at the Criterion Theatre and their acclaimed production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong will return to the Apollo Theatre from 20 October 2016. The company is led by Artistic Director Henry Lewis and Company Director Jonathan Sayer.
The Play That Goes Wrong is directed by Mark Bell, with set designs by Nigel Hook, lighting by Ric Mountjoy and costumes by Roberto Surace. Tour cast to be announced. The Play That Goes Wrong is produced in the West End and on tour by Kenny Wax Ltd and Stage Presence Ltd.
