The Play That Goes Wrong director Mark Bell talks ahead of Birmingham Hippodrome performances

As the title suggests, everything that can go wrong… does and as the accident prone thesps battle on against all the odds to reach their final curtain call, hilarious results ensue.

Hailed ‘a gut-busting hit’ by the New York Times, Mischief Theatre’s sell-out West End comedy, which is now playing on Broadway, has won a host of celebrity endorsements from the likes of Joanna Lumley who said: “We laughed until the tears ran down our faces, it has to be seen” to Ant & Dec, who said: “The funniest show we’ve seen! If you can get a ticket, go!”

The show is returning to Birmingham after a sell-out run last year.

Director Mark Bell created the West End productions of the Olivier Award-winning The Play That Goes Wrong, as well as The Comedy About a Bank Robbery. He originally wanted to be an actor but spent a lot of his career training and teaching the art of clowning and is a virtuoso at shaping comedy.

choice

He was immediately drawn to The Play That Goes Wrong. “It needs to make me laugh, or I can see how it would be funny. Sometimes on the page they don’t look like that much, but I was at the very first reading of The Play That Goes Wrong and that was obvious – I could see where they were going to take the characters, playing off their idea of the audience – that was an easy choice.

“I honestly don’t know, I don’t have a method – you just read it a couple of times and see if you can picture how you would do it. I knew straight away the kind of actors I would want and how I would approach it.”

Mark puts in hours and hours during rehearsals to make sure his shows are funny.

“You just don’t know – sometimes it’s the little innocuous things that you’ve put in to bridge from one moment to the next suddenly start getting a laugh, and you just wonder why.

“Usually the penny drops and you see why. I don’t think anybody can really anticipate where the laughs will land, sometimes it’s just a simple movement that an actor does that’s funny. I would say about 80 per cent of stuff that we put in rehearsal lands and we don’t have to change, and there’s always a couple of things that you’re sad aren’t working and you have to change.”

He says the most important thing is that people take their characters seriously, even in shows as silly as The Play That Goes Wrong.

“As the actor playing it, you can never show the audience that you find it funny. The character on stage has to be laughed at and not with. Sometimes you get characters who enjoy being laughed at and that’s fun for them. For actors I say you have to play it truthfully, like you’re playing a dramatic part. Treat it like you’re doing a Chekhov play. Comedy isn’t easier than dramatic acting, it’s ten times as hard. You need the same dramatic truth that you have for the character but in a ridiculously absurd setting, whilst getting your blocking and your timing exactly right, otherwise you don’t get the laugh that you need for the show to move on. You’ve got to be both truthful and a master technician at the same time – and that’s hard.”

The successful UK production has been described as having sets as shaky as a Conservative immigration manifesto pledge and a script as tortuous as a Diane Abbott interview. The show originally started in a pub theatre before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios, enjoying a UK tour and an extended run at the Duchess Theatre in the West End.

The writers and creators of the play, Henry Shields, Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer, are stunned that they were able to recreate their madcap roles on Broadway.

Henry Shields says: “It’s been very positive. We’ve been overwhelmed as to how supportive American audiences have been.”

Henry Lewis adds: “We haven’t really changed much, most of the show is performed as it is in London. Over the course of the whole journey of the show lots has changed as it has been performed, but it hasn’t changed much for Broadway audiences, just a few terms that aren’t used in the USA and making sure that’s clear.”