The show must go wrong

How did a farce about a gaffe-filled amateur dramatic whodunnit become one of Britain's greatest ever exports, the toast of dozens of countries?

- Chris Wiegand

A BUNCH OF TWERPS are floundering in the spotlight, striving to bluff their way through disaster. The vibe is not quite keep calm and carry on, more like carry on regardless. It could be a scene from any number of recent British political calamities. But this is the premise of the deliriously funny The Play That Goes Wrong, about a hapless amateur dramatics troupe staging a whodunnit.

Despite having its premiere in a tiny room above a London pub, there is nothing amateurish about the Olivier award-winning comedy - one of the longest-running shows in the West End. It spawned a franchise of "Goes Wrong" farces on stage, as well as a dazzlingly inventive TV series, and catapulted the creators, Mischief Theatre, to international glory. The play is on in Krakow, Kladno and Kyiv and has been performed in many other European cities and on Broadway. Next year it tours Australia and New Zealand.

You may wonder what sort of message this pratfall-packed export is sending about Britain, so often a laughing stock on the international stage. The play was first performed at the Old Red Lion in London at the end of 2012, just as "omnishambles" was named word of the year. Are the chaotic failures of its fictional Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society a theatrical equivalent to Boris Johnson dangling on a zipwire during the Olympics, hoist by his own petard? Much like the New Yorker magazine channelled Monty Python with its "silly walk off a cliff" cover about the 2016 EU referendum.