Christmas Carol Goes Wrong review – an Eber-knees-up in the West End

Mischief truly give audiences what they want. The creators of the …Goes Wrong and The Comedy About… series are all in on riotous laughs and cosy familiarity. They’ve established a loyal fan base, and watching this addition to their crowd-pleasing canon, it’s lovely to hear the cast cheered on from the outset, as though we are greeting old friends.

Furthermore, Christmas Carol Goes Wrong relentlessly hurls every Yuletide trope at us: carol singing, bell ringing, snow falling (or at least getting lobbed about a lot), gift-wrapped parcels, chocolate… and a Tiny Tim to haunt your worst nightmares.

Previous exposure to Mischief’s work is not essential to enjoying co-writers Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields‘ new-ish seasonal offering, first seen in an earlier version on BBC TV in 2017, but it does explain why the crowd roars with approval each time a beloved character appears. As with their springtime hit this year, The Comedy About Spies, a serious budget has been lavished on this knockabout frolic, as befits a company whose every theatrical outing since The Play That Goes Wrong feels like a license to print money.

Even the deliberately tackier elements of Libby Todd’s sets and Roberto Surace’s costumes have a satisfyingly glossy sheen, all gorgeously lit by David Howe, while some of the effects wouldn’t look out of place in a conventional Christmas Carol. The gigantic Ghost of Christmas Future puppet is a genuinely chilling creation, or at least it is until it encounters some unexpected challenges navigating the gates to a cemetery, one of several sequences where director Matt DiCarlo’s production reaches that blissful comic plateau where it becomes physically impossible to stop laughing.

So, the hapless Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are at it again, turning Dickens’ festive classic into a three-ring circus of technical ineptitude, raging egotism, petty rivalries, and grim determination to make it to the finish line even when sets, lights, costumes and the cast itself seem to be conspiring to prevent that from happening. Where this show unexpectedly scores though is that, unlike some of its predecessors, the writing takes time to set up these flawed individuals as credible people, and it undoubtedly helps that most of the characters are carried over from earlier plays in the franchise.

An opening scene sees the company auditioning for Daniel Fraser’s perpetually seething director, assisted by Nancy Zamit‘s clueless, relentlessly upbeat stage manager; we learn that Greg Tannahill‘s neurotic Jonathan has PTSD from earlier onstage mishaps and now harbours a raft of not entirely irrational fears, that Sayer’s enthusiastic talent vacuum Dennis couldn’t memorise lines to save his life, that Lewis’ bellowing audience favourite Robert fancies himself as leading man and will stop at nothing to achieve that…

As with Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s backstage farce masterpiece, the comic pay-off is so much funnier when it feels like there’s something genuinely at stake for these well-meaning but inept humans, and the play is more than just a series of sight gags, pratfalls and puns, however well executed. And Christmas Carol Goes Wrong really is uproariously, side-splittingly funny, all the more so because the performances, even at their most manic, keep one eye on some sort of truth.

That’s especially true of Fraser, who invests director Chris with equal parts venom, superciliousness and desperation. Sasha Frost excels as ambitious Sandra, convinced she’s on the verge of a professional career, inordinately proud of her “mouth acting” and ability to register no less than three emotions. Zamit is a lovely, sincere stage presence, and Matt Cavendish is a delight as eager Max, multi-roling like a good’un but objectively terrible in every part. Chris Leask’s deadpan, fatalistic stage manager is another highlight.

Not every joke works, and some of them (Robert trapped in a giant gift box, a garish, anachronistic toy kitchen made to human scale that bursts into life at inopportune moments) outstay their welcome. Mostly though, this is an irresistible Christmas treat, and it has real heart too: Scrooge-like Chris has an outlook change worthy of Ebenezer himself and in keeping with the spirit of the original Dickens.