"It’s official. We can laugh again. Time to go see The Play That Goes Wrong. Director Matt DiCarlo has let the cast loose on this wonderful farce with but one instruction: go for it. No laugh remains un-milked; no scene un-stolen; no wink un-winked. Not even the furniture is safe. At the zoo they tell you not to feed the animals, but for the actors of The Cornley University Drama Society, it is just the opposite. A steady diet of laughter and applause facilitates the breeding program. Thus the gags have gags, and double takes have given birth to triplets."
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"My reactions ranged between thinking this play was exhaustingly funny to finding it just plain exhausting...Everything is pitched so aggressively, you wind up feeling as battered as the ensemble. I propose putting your rational mind into sleep mode, the better to savor tickling images of order-inverting bizarreness, straight out of Dada, in which suddenly nothing is in its customary place or being used for its customary purpose. There's a wild, redeeming poetry in such anarchy."
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"Depending on your tolerance for ceaseless slapstick, 'The Play That Goes Wrong' will either have you rolling in the aisles or rolling your eyes. It is certainly a marvel of coordination: The imported British cast deftly navigates the pitfalls of Nigel Hook’s ingeniously tumbledown set, and overacts with relish...But you may find it rather exhausting...It struggles to sustain interest in its series of absurdly unfortunate events. The show must go on, yes, but must it go on quite so long?"
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"It’s so ridiculous it makes you feel almost ashamed to love it...The tumble from slapstick into absurdity is the best part of 'The Play That Goes Wrong'...Not that the stage tricks aren’t fun...But those tricks and carefully rehearsed ineptitudes are not, in the end, deeply satisfying, however well achieved they are...Though they let too much air out of the concept, shriveling somewhat its effectiveness and diminishing its buoyancy, I laughed at all of those things."
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"An intricately planned fiasco...It takes incredible skill to pull off such bungling, and Mark Bell’s production nails every spit take and sight gag...Where Frayn went for three dimensions, Mischief Theatre settles for two—but that’s enough to sustain both acts, just barely. The show is pure comedic eye candy, and technically flawless. It’s closer to synchronized swimming or fight choreography than to its more contemplative theatrical cousins, revealing almost nothing about the human condition."
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"The greatest challenge becomes hearing the dialogue beyond the well-justified laughter...Silliness? Slapstick? Sure, but also a tribute to the valiant pseudo-professionalism of this imagined troupe...What Buster Keaton did with clock hands and Charlie Chaplin did with an old boot this cast accomplishes with murder...Mark Bell’s direction keeps an unrelenting pace that leaves the audience breathless and the actors clueless."
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"It’s funny. Sometimes it’s very, very funny, though you have to keep the faith through an almost appallingly tin-eared and flat-footed first act to get to the good stuff...An overabundance of non-sensical sight gags, slow burns, pratfalls, missed cues, wink-winks and the like dull the viewer’s senses and drag out a sophomoric sketch that would be sharper and funnier at an intermissionless 80 minutes. On the other hand...'The Play That Went Wrong' aspires to no higher goal than escapism."
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"The curtain rises and things go awry...It’s the stuff that makes for a funny 10-minute skit...Unfortunately, there’s another hour-and-a-half to go in this show. That’s a lot of time to spend trying to grin and bear it...The Mischief Theatre has a game cast that will try anything for a chuckle...But along the way they forsake the fact that comedy requires logic...A comedy that comes up short with laughs and overstays its welcome—now that’s murder."
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