Diary: Don't tell the bride, but the groom's done himself a mischief (theatre)

The events of recent weeks would suggest that Boris Johnson’s government has been taking hot tips from The Play That Goes Wrong, but Mischief Theatre’s slapstick farce has in fact latterly inspired a more unexpected affair. Enter The Wedding That Goes Wrong.

While this may sound like an archetypal West End seat-filler, there’s no fiction here, for it actually describes the real-life nuptials of a couple from Cheshire on the E4 reality show Don’t Tell the Bride.

It’s a tried and tested format: the groom plans the entire wedding unsupervised, and the bride is cruelly allowed to shop for her dream dress and fairytale venue, only to be forced to surrender to the whimsy of her hapless hubby-to-be.

Here, groom Dean adores The Play That Goes Wrong, while his bride, Kayleigh, has spent years planning her perfect wedding down to the last napkin. To put it nicely, she likes things her way. What could possibly go right?

True to form, not much, but boy did he take TPTGW’s values to heart. Forget collapsing sets and fluffed lines – at this performance, the vicar set himself on fire, on arrival the bride was forced to trudge through a construction-site obstacle course featuring £1,200-worth of men in diggers, and the cake turned out to be a tyre covered in royal icing.

It’s certainly a fitting homage to the genre, so if Mischief is in the market for another spin-off…

tabard@thestage.co.uk

The Play That Goes Wrong to be adapted for BBC1 six-part series