MISCHIEF MASTERCLASS IN SOME SERIOUS SLAPSTICK

What the Dickens? Those shameless spoofers the Mischief Theatre company have set their silly sights on our most sacred seasonal show.

- With STEFAN KYRIAZIS

CHRISTMAS CAROL GOES WRONG

UK TOUR TO MARCH 1, mischiefcomedy.​com

And, woe betide us, they've brought back all eight fictional members of the talentless, bungling Cornley Amateur Drama Society.

The deliriously inept bunch tackled a murder mystery in 2012's The Play That Goes Wrong, and took us to Neverland a year later in Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Twelve years on, they're as hopeless as ever.

Long-suffering, uptight director Chris (Daniel Fraser) remains a clenched bundle of snide superiority and eye-twitching frustration who's about to painfully discover that the rest regard him as a misanthropic misery.

Rather like a certain fictional character who is reawakened to the joys of the world with some supernatural help...

As always, Mischief co-founder and writer Henry Lewis is the brilliantly booming wannabe thesp, Robert, homicidally convinced he should have the lead, and that every production should be done in the nude. As the Ghost of Christmas Present, he's a brilliant sight gag with just his red stockinged legs sticking out of a giant wrapped parcel, even before he bellows he can't see or breathe in there and absolute mayhem ensues.

The Goes Wrong shows are masterclasses in choreographed chaos with Buster Keaton levels of metronomic precision to all the pratfalls.

This latest one delivers time after time, while lights keep constantly crashing down from the overhead rig.