Peter Pan Goes Wrong

The writing team whose debut script brought the house down around The Play That Goes Wrong has gone and done it again.

With rivalries unresolved, love unrequited, and sets hanging together by a thread, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society tackles Peter Pan with fabulously misplaced confidence and an actor fed lines over wireless headphones.  And what should be a straightforward stage production of Peter Pan turns into an ever escalating disaster.  Private lives spill onto the stage, water spills where no water belongs, and sound technicians inadvertently spill the mortifying beans — and yet the show goes on.  Though the cast finds itself embroiled in a cascade of catastrophes, hardly anybody actually walks off, or at least not without a pronounced limp.

With a marvellously unstable triple revolving set, an inept “flying operator”, and positively lethal electrical arrangements, the play is great fun for anybody old enough to appreciate that flying accidents need not actually harm the actors.  The humour here is generally unpredictable, varied, and nearly constant, from slapstick physical comedy to personal blunders and revealing admissions.  The cast’s portrayal of ham actors, always tricky, was note perfect in the actors’ panicked responses to conflicting direction, breakages, and increasing mayhem.  And its prior training of the audience served it well.

If you’re up for an evening of belly laughs, don’t miss it.

John P. Harvey

Image: Chris Bean, in Peter Pan Goes Wrong.  Photographer: David Watson.