Fan CastingThe play that goes wrong (1972)

The fictitious Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society (Cornley University in the American version), fresh from such hits as The Lion and The Wardrobe, Cat, and James and the Peach (or James, Where's your Peach?), has received a substantial bequest and is putting on a performance of The Murder at Haversham Manor – a 1920s murder mystery play, similar to The Mousetrap, which has the right number of parts for the members. The script was written by the fictitious Susie H. K. Brideswell. During the performance, a play within a play, a plethora of disasters befall the cast, including doors sticking, props falling from the walls, and floors collapsing. Cast members are seen misplacing props, forgetting lines (in one scene, an actor repeats an earlier line of dialogue and causes the dialogue sequence triggered by that line to be repeated, ever more frenetically, several times), missing cues, breaking character, having to drink white spirit instead of whisky, mispronouncing words, stepping on fingers, being hidden in a grandfather clock, and being manhandled off stage, with one cast member being knocked unconscious and her replacement (and the group technician) refusing to yield when she returns. The climax is a tribute to a scene in Buster Keaton's film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), when virtually the whole of the remaining set collapses.