‘Tis the season to be jolly and, thanks to this latest masterwork from Mischief Theatre, it is hard to be anything but.
A sequel of sorts to The Play That Goes Wrong, we are once again in the company of the Cornley Polytechnic Amateur Dramatics Crew. Not content with pulverising murder mysteries and Peter Pan, they pull together to put their own mark on arguably the second greatest Christmas story of them all (after Die Hard, of course).
There is something wonderfully reassuring about this mightily motley crew. No matter how catastrophic the circumstances, no matter how aggressively the scenery rebels against them, they will plough on regardless. Christmas Carol Goes Wrong at the Apollo Theatre leans hard into that spirit of indefatigable incompetence, delivering a festive farce that is as carefully engineered as it is cheerfully unhinged.
At the centre of the chaos is Dan Fraser’s Chris Bean, Cornley’s long-suffering director and leading man, who approaches Dickens with the kind of grim reverence usually reserved for auditioning for Hamlet at the RSC. Fraser’s gift lies in restraint. While the world collapses around him, his performance is rooted in a furious determination to maintain ‘the integrity of the text’, a running joke that only grows funnier as that integrity is smashed to smithereens by falling lights, stupidly huge props, and actors who can’t remember which Christmas show they are meant to be in.
Around him, the ensemble propel themselves towards disaster with surgical precision. Matthew Cavendish’s over-eager Max ricochets between a series of roles, while the boundless, and often groundless, optimism of Nancy Zamit’s Annie is a delight in itself. Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields (co-writers of the play alongside Henry Lewis, and also among the original creators of Mischief Theatre) bring a familiar, gleeful anarchy to proceedings. Their knack for elevating slapstick into something oddly human remains the company’s secret weapon. These are characters who desperately want to be good, and that yearning gives the pratfalls an emotional undertow.
Direction from Matt DiCarlo ensures that the mayhem never tips into mush. Every collapse, jammed door, and verbal fumble feels timed to the millisecond. It is controlled chaos, and that control is what keeps the audience laughing rather than wincing. Libby Todd’s set may not be as snappy or as full of hidden delights as that for The Play That Goes Wrong, but it is still a marvel of malevolent ingenuity, with its outsized and disintegrating furniture. Beds disappear when they shouldn’t, the smallest character becomes the largest, and a prop chest becomes an unexpectedly dominant antagonist. Michelle Bristow’s costumes play their part too, gradually degrading as the evening progresses, visually charting Cornley’s descent into theatrical oblivion.
What’s striking is how much of the humour comes not from big gags but from behaviour. A look held too long. A desperate attempt to drag a fellow actor back into position. A whispered argument that escalates into a public meltdown. DiCarlo and the cast understand that the funniest moments often happen on the edges of the action, where pride, panic, and petty rivalry collide.
That said, this is unmistakably a Mischief Theatre production, and with that comes a degree of familiarity. Some jokes are signposted well in advance, and a handful are milked just past their peak. If you’ve seen The Play That Goes Wrong or Peter Pan Goes Wrong, you’ll recognise the rhythms. But there’s also a comforting reliability to that structure, particularly in a Christmas show. The audience knows what it has come for, and the company delivers with professional abandon.
Christmas Carol Goes Wrong runs at the Apollo Theatre until 26 January 2026.
Book tickets now at mischiefcomedy.com
Words by Joe Miller
Photos by Mark Senior
