A truly slapstick production

SLAPSTICK is alive and well as the spectacle of a bunch of amateur dramatists who are driven to distraction as their panto falls apart around them comes to the stage.

Coming from the same newly crowned Olivier Award-wining team who produced West End hit The Play That Goes Wrong, their latest offering Peter Pan Goes Wrong tells the story of Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society as they try to present J.M. Barrie’s classic tale of Peter Pan.

But just as the title suggests, everything begins to fall apart as the story of the boy who never grew up and an adventure in Neverland dissolves into mayhem with plenty of physical comedy.

Co-written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, the play promises to bring a host of classic slapstick laughs and tumbles - inspired by actor and vaudevillian icon Buster Keaton.

“I think a lot of people enjoy the more classic style of comedy and there is just not as much of it on offer anything,” Lewis said “There is a big physical comedy gap since the days of silent cinema.”

“If you are in the same room quite often physical comedy appears to be quite dangerous and the fear of that and the impact of it is great when it is live.

“The cast are all surviving. In the West End someone dislocated their shoulder but they were not doing anything particularly strenuous.”

The amateur players try their best to keep everything under control but everything that can go wrong does go wrong with the play offering a satirical look at life in the theatre.

“You are completely in the environment of the play and it is something completely different,” Lewis said. “There are a lot of off stage storylines which start to spill on stage during Peter Pan and you get the see the mechanics of the production and how they change the scene.”

“I think fundamentally the story is about the actors and that is the engine that drives it. It is all about said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, and is very visual and you totally feel for them.”

Peter Pan Goes Wrong is a follow up to Mischief Theatre’s smash-hit production The Play That Goes Wrong which enjoyed two successive runs at Trafalgar studios in the west end and scooped the best new comedy title at the WhatsOnStage awards last year.

The theatre company’s success was recognised earlier this week when Lewis, along with his co-writers Shields and Burke, accepted an Olivier Award at the Royal Opera House for Best New Comedy 2015 for The Play That Goes Wrong.

Just three years ago the spoof was being performed in a small room above a pub with a set little more than a painted flat and a sofa.

“We’re so thrilled and we’re eternally grateful to everyone who made the show possible, especially the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve come to see it,” says Lewis. The sky is the limit for Mischief Theatre as Lewis said they hope to take The Play That Goes Wrong to America as they work on new material.