POKING fun at amateur theatricals has a long provenance. Shakespeare did it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while in modern times Michael Frayn’s Noises Off set a high benchmark for opening night disasters involving a wayward set.

Mischief Theatre’s award-winning play-within-a-play owes something to both, with earnest endeavour going wrong from the start – or, to be exact, before the start – and physical comedy of the highest order from an extremely talented ensemble cast of eight.

It moves at a cracking pace and is certainly the funniest play at the Civic for some time.

Audience members taking their seats become aware all is not right as assistants in the auditorium anxiously ask about a missing CD, while on stage there are frantic attempts at a last-minute repair of the set for The Murder at Haversham Manor, the latest production by the amateur Cornley Polytechnic Society, whose director, Chris Bean, finally arrives to announce with a confident flourish.

From then on, everything that can go wrong does in catastrophic fashion.

Among many moments of pure comic joy there are outstanding contortions involving a telephone cord, a collapsing floor, recovery of an unconscious actress through a backdrop window and her surprise magic reappearance in a long case clock angled upon a chaise longue.

Pru Farrier