This Is London 25 October 2019

The cast of The Play That Goes Wrong.
THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG
NEW CAST EVEN MORE DREADFUL
The Play That Goes Wrong, the
Olivier Award-winning box office hit, will
celebrate a new cast at the Duchess
Theatre from Tuesday 5 November.
Awarded the 2014 WhatsOnStage
Award for Best New Comedy, the 2015
Olivier Award for Best New Comedy and
a Tony Award for the Broadway transfer,
The Play That Goes Wrong continues to
delight audiences in the West End. The
show’s success is a testament to the
hard work and determination of a group
of drama school graduates who became
friends, set up a company under the
name ‘Mischief’ and created an
extraordinary body of work.
The Play That Goes Wrong shows
no signs of slowing down since its first
performance at a London fringe venue
with only four paying customers. Since
then, it has played to an audience of
over two million and now has
productions in over 30 countries.
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.
Box office telephone 0330 333 4810.
Photo: Alastair Muir.
[BLANK] Donmar Theatre
Forty years ago, two prison inmates
founded Clean Break which has
continued working to bring the hidden
stories of female prisoners to a wider
audience and transform the lives of the
women themselves. This co-production
with the Donmar reunites them with
playwright Alice Birch who has provided
a door-stopping script of over five
hundred pages comprising one hundred
scenes from which the producing
company is instructed to not only
choose as many or as few as it wishes
(director Maria Aberg’s compelling
production selects some twenty odd) but
also to re-order and repeat scenes and
allocate names to the characters in order
to construct its own narrative.
This approach is bound to leave one
wondering what has been left out, and
some sections prove more successful
than others. But in just under two
interval-free hours, an impressive allfemale
cast (which includes two young
girls) disturbingly conveys the impact
that falling foul of the criminal justice
system, poverty and abuse can have -
not only on the women themselves but
also on their children and their own
parents.
In the longest section, a group of
professional middle class friends (the
actresses use their own first names)
gathers round the lavishly spread table
to eat and take delivery of coke and
crates of wine – only lawyer Kate’s new
girlfriend seemingly aware that, in other
circumstances, this would be much
more than a superficially consequencefree
recreational indulgence. In the brief
scene which follows, a tiny child
determinedly shatters their pure white
crockery with a sledge hammer. A
mother refuses to give her daughter any
more cash, even though she knows
she’ll probably resort to prostitution to
feed her addiction. Later, a pregnant
daughter confronts the mother she
cannot forgive for being absent,
incarcerated, whilst she was growing up.
One sometimes longs for a narrative
arc among these vignettes, but Birch’s
recurring themes make it abundantly
clear that taking responsibility, though
possible, is often a far from easy option
in a chaotic life.
Louise Kingsley
A Christmas Carol at Immersive | LDN.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT
IMMERSIVE I LONDON
Olivier Award Winning Producers
Hartshorn - Hook Productions are
teaming up with Flavourology, the
innovative team who made their name
creating immersive dining experiences
with Gingerline, to create A Christmas
Carol, a heart-warming, foot stomping
immersive production and veritable
Christmas feast which will open at
Immersive I London on 27 November.
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