The Play That Goes Wrong

The Play That Goes Wrong at Spencer Theatre At Kansas City Repertory Theatre

A murder mystery where the corpse keeps sitting up presents a very specific problem for amateur detectives trying to maintain dramatic tension.

The Play That Goes Wrong brings the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society to the Spencer Theatre at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, where their production of the fictional 1920s whodunit The Murder at Haversham Manor faces obstacle after obstacle. Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, this physical comedy watches furniture betray its handlers, sets refuse to cooperate, and lines vanish from memory at precisely the wrong moment. Under Stuart Carden's direction, the Kansas City Repertory Theatre production follows these determined performers as they soldier through a production that seems designed to sabotage itself.

The pleasure here is double: you're invited into a classic drawing-room mystery where suspects circle and clues accumulate, but simultaneously watching that murder mystery collapse under the weight of its own ambition. An unstable set and missed cues pile up while the would-be actors scramble to preserve some shred of dignity. Their commitment never wavers even as the theatrical machinery around them refuses to obey.

What makes the comedy work is that these aren't incompetent people—they're earnest amateurs confronting disasters they cannot control. The victim who struggles to stay dead, the props that malfunction, the mounting chaos onstage: every mishap raises the question of whether this production will survive the next sixty seconds.

Grab tickets to watch determination meet disaster at Kansas City Repertory Theatre.