A couple of months ago Bath audiences were treated to Noises Off – a comedy about the shambolic stage performance.

Now gluttons for theatrical pandemonium have been given the chance to see a variation on that theme – The Play That Goes Wrong.

It’s less of a title, more of a description of the chaos that develops over two rib-tickling hours which ends in a denoument which is hysterical in more ways that one.

In theory, this is meant to be the Cornley Polytechic Drama Society’s take on a 1920s murder mystery – but things are already going badly wrong before the play has even begun.

The lighting and sound operator’s copy of Rio by Duran Duran goes missing, only to turn up later in the most unexpected of places and an audience member is enlisted to hold up a collapsing mantlepiece.

What follows is a corpse who won’t stay dead, a leading lady who is continuously knocked out and ‘surreptiously’ dragged out through a window by other cast members or stuffed into a grandfather clock, while her initially reluctant understudy turns feral as she refuses to relinquish her role.

The butler bellows his lines, but has trouble saying certain words which he has written on his hand (how would you pronounce facade?), and he also mistakes white spirit for whisky, serving it continuously to other cast members.

And if that wasn’t enough, lines are fluffed or out of sync and props are lost or confused – the actor playing the detective has to subsitute a set of keys and a glass vase for his pencil and pad. The set also refuses to behave – locked doors refuse to open, open doors are suddenly jammed and paintings and fixtures crash to the floor.

I laughed like a drain through the first act, but couldn’t imagine how much more disaster and mayhem could be summoned up without the play becoming repetitive.

However, as the curtain rose for the second half it only got worse, much much worse and even funnier.

As blood poured from foreheads, the evil-eyed understudy took a roll of duct tape to her rival, the set began to fall to pieces around them, and the mezzanine level juddered and began to collapse, the ‘murder mystery’ peformers continued gamely on while desperately holding onto furniture that was in danger or falling onto the stage or the audience.

It would be hard to pick out one member of the cast as they all played their parts to hammy am-dram perfection.

The disaster which unfolded on stage was a testament to their skills as actors. The chaos they so successfully created could only be the product of consummate skill, timing and talent.