The Play That Goes Wrong

The Play That Goes Wrong is a slapstick farce about an amateur theater company staging an old-fashioned country-house murder mystery from the 1920s, and about everything that can possibly go wrong while they do it. Doors refuse to open, the floor gives way, props vanish and the scenery slowly falls apart, while the actors push on as if nothing were happening.

The comedy comes from Mischief, a British company founded by three drama school friends, and it has become one of the most popular stage comedies in the world. The company says that as of January 2026 more than 4 million people had seen it, in more than 50 countries. In New York it first played Broadway, then moved to New World Stages, where it has run since February 2019. With the Broadway years counted, it is in its ninth year in the city, and no closing date has been announced.

The fictional Cornley University Drama Society (called Cornley Polytechnic in Britain) has spent years staging cut-down shows because it never had enough members. A large bequest has finally changed that, and the society can at last put on a murder mystery with a full cast. The chosen piece is The Murder at Haversham Manor, an old-fashioned whodunit in which an inspector looks into the death of Charles Haversham at a country house.

The evening is opening night. Before the curtain even rises, the crew is still patching a broken mantelpiece and trying to find a missing dog. Chris Bean, who heads the society, plays Inspector Carter and also directs, and he has handled almost every other job himself, from the sets and costumes to the box office and the fight scenes.

Once the play begins, disaster follows disaster. Actors forget lines, miss cues and lose props. The "corpse" can't keep still. The leading lady is knocked out cold, and a crew member who steps in for her, script in hand, then refuses to give the part back when she comes round. At one point a repeated line traps the cast in a loop, and they race through the same stretch of dialogue again and again, faster every time. The cast of characters includes Jonathan, Robert, Sandra, Max and Dennis, all playing roles in the creaky mystery, plus stage manager Annie and Trevor, who runs lights and sound.

Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields wrote the play. The three met while training at LAMDA, the London drama school, and set up Mischief in 2008. Lewis and Sayer also acted in it, as Robert Grove and Dennis Tyde, in both the original London and Broadway casts. The trio went on to create a whole family of "Goes Wrong" works, including Peter Pan Goes Wrong, A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, The Comedy About a Bank Robbery and the BBC series The Goes Wrong Show.

What looks like chaos is carefully planned. Every fall, crash and collapse is staged with precision, and Hook's set is built to break on cue, night after night. The physical comedy is broad and fast, and the actors have to be skilled at falling, dodging and hanging on to furniture that is coming apart around them.

The fun does not stop at the interval: during intermission, some of the actors stay in character and chat with audience members in the lobby.

As of October 2026, the New York company includes David McElwee as Chris, Samuel Douglas as Max, Adam Langdon as Dennis, Kolby Kindle as Trevor, Greg Balla as Jonathan, Joanie Anderson as Annie and Liana Hunt as Sandra. Recent changes include Chris Lanceley, who left in July 2026 after years with the company, and Trevor Braun, who played Dennis more than 1,500 times before leaving in September 2026.

The play started small. Its first version, titled The Murder Before Christmas, opened on December 4, 2012, at the Old Red Lion, a pub theater in Islington, London. According to the company, only four people paid to see the first performance. It moved to Trafalgar Studios in 2013 and on September 14, 2014, reached the West End, opening at the Duchess. It has never left the Duchess, where it is the longest-running play since the theater opened in 1929, and the London run is booked until January 2028.

The Broadway production began previews at the Lyceum Theatre on March 9, 2017, and opened on April 2, 2017, with the original West End cast. By July 2018 it was the longest-running play on Broadway at the time. It posted a closing notice for August 2018, extended, and finally closed on January 6, 2019, after 745 regular performances and 27 previews.

Instead of leaving town, the show moved to Stage 4 at New World Stages, Off-Broadway. Previews started on February 11, 2019, and the official opening was on February 20. Performances stopped on March 12, 2020, because of the pandemic and came back on October 15, 2021. The 2,000th Off-Broadway performance was on July 28, 2025. The show has also toured the UK and North America, played Chicago in 2021 and 2022, and has been licensed and translated in more than 30 other countries.