Mind Mangler - Member of the Tragic Circle

Having seen all of the Mischief Theatre productions, I’m familiar with their ‘goes wrong’ antics by now, and also their stage personas – Jonathan Sayers as the not-too-bright one, Henry Lewis as the one whose wife left him, not that he’s bitter about it, oh dear me no. I’m also quite familiar with the way in which they interact with the audience, but after a while you realise that many, if not all the ‘random’ audience selections are anything but. The few actual magic effects in the show are well done, although for this theatre goer, sadly, the law of diminishing returns applies. Having loved The Play That Goes Wrong and found Peter Pan goes wrong as one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, the more Mischief Theatre productions I see the more they seem to fall into the same formula. And for me, a lot of the humour comes from not knowing what will happen next; whereas with this production, you can have a shrewd guess at how things will turn out. There were quite a few laughs, but I couldn’t say it was absolutely hilarious. The performers do their usual good job (although the beauty of your entire act being based on things going wrong means if something really does go wrong the audience will assume it's part of the act). It's just the material that's a bit soggy in places.