A one-joke show, for sure, but a single joke made up of a thousand whirring components. You can think of The Play That Goes Wrong as a theatrical Rube Goldberg machine – one built to deliver laughs on cue from a precisely engineered cascade of chaotic components.

A huge West End hit for its creators, British actor-writers Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong turns the stuff of every stage actor’s nightmares (missing props, stuck doors, flubbed lines and the like) into a balletically precise 100 minutes of pratfalls and panic.

Sebastiano Pitruzzello, Brodie Masini, Joe Kosky and Stephanie Astrid John in The Play That Goes Wrong. Photo © Jordan Munns

After some pre-show conniptions involving the crew (and a lucky audience member recruited to stabilise the set), the play’s already anxious director, Chris Bean – leading light of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society – steps forward to welcome us to tonight’s presentation: The Murder at Haversham Manor.

Lights up on Charles, scion of a wealthy family, lying dead on the chaise longue. He would be more convincingly...