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The Play That Goes Wrong Opens at Solaire Friday, With Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante in an International Cast

The Play That Goes Wrong - Mikkie Bradshaw - Volante

The Olivier Award-winning comedy opens Friday, November 6, at The Theatre at Solaire and runs through November 22.

The Play That Goes Wrong opens at The Theatre at Solaire in Parañaque on Friday, November 6, at 8 PM. GMG Productions is presenting it in arrangement with Mischief Worldwide, the London company that created the show, for 15 performances through Sunday, November 22. It is the Philippine premiere of a comedy that has been running in the West End since 2014.

What the Show Is

The show is a play-within-a-play. The Cornley Drama Society, an amateur troupe with more ambition than budget, is staging a 1920s country-house whodunnit called The Murder at Haversham Manor. A man is found dead, an inspector arrives to find out who did it, and the production falls apart around everyone on stage. The set gives way early and keeps giving way, and the actors press on because, as far as they’re concerned, the show must go on.

Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields wrote it for Mischief Theatre, and it first played in 2012 at the Old Red Lion, a small theater above a London pub. It won the 2015 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, and its Broadway transfer won the 2017 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design in a Play. It is now in its 12th year at the Duchess Theatre as the longest-running comedy in the West End, and its producers count stagings in more than 50 countries.

GMG founder and chief executive Carlos Candal has pitched it as a first show for people who don’t usually go to the theater, saying everyone “whether you’re six or sixty, laughs together.” In London, the show is recommended for ages 8 and up. It uses pyrotechnics, gunshot effects and a great deal of slapstick.

A Filipino Actress in an International Cast

Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante plays Sandra Wilkinson, the society’s self-appointed leading lady, who in turn plays Florence Colleymoore, the dead man’s fiancée. She made her professional debut in 2011 as Liesl in The Sound of Music at Resorts World Manila. Her credits since include Carrie, Fun Home, Kinky Boots, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Sweeney Todd and the Asian tour of Saturday Night Fever, plus the farce Run for Your Wife, which counts as useful training here. She won a Gawad Buhay for Female Featured Performance in a Musical for playing Carrie Pipperidge in Repertory Philippines’ 2022 production of Carousel. She was most recently seen as Antonia in Repertory Philippines’ Man of La Mancha, and she was also in GMG’s Filipino-led Come From Away.

That Come From Away history is why Candal has called her casting “deeply personal” for the company. He has said putting a Filipino performer at the center of an international company is part of what GMG wants its imports to do.

The rest of the company comes from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and several of them have done the show before, on the West End, on UK tours and on the 10th-anniversary tour of Australia and New Zealand. Candal joked that “If this company were any more international, we’d need subtitles.”

Also Not in the Cast

A word on who you won’t see. Darren Espanto is not in The Play That Goes Wrong. Jericho Rosales isn’t either. GMG put both of them on posters for the show’s social media pages anyway, which is about the most on-brand way to promote a play where everything goes wrong: start with the casting announcement.

So, to manage expectations: anyone who buys a ticket on the strength of the Darren Espanto poster will get Liam Horrigan as Jonathan, an actor playing a corpse who cannot quite manage to stay dead. Anyone holding out for Jericho Rosales will get Tom Babbage as Chris, the society’s director, who has also cast himself as the inspector. Neither of them will sing.

NOT IN THE CAST. Darren Espanto won't be appearing in The Play That Goes Wrong but his poster appears on the show's social media account at least.
NOT IN THE CAST. Darren Espanto won’t be appearing in The Play That Goes Wrong, but his poster appears on the show’s social media account at least.
ALSO NOT IN THE CAST. Jericho Rosales won't be appearing in The Play That Goes Wrong as well but he got his own poster too.
ALSO NOT IN THE CAST. Jericho Rosales won’t be appearing in The Play That Goes Wrong either, but he got his own poster too.

The Cast

Each actor plays a member of the Cornley Drama Society, and most of them then play a role in Haversham Manor.

  • Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante as Sandra (Florence Colleymoore)
  • Tom Babbage as Chris, the society’s director (Inspector Carter)
  • Owen Jenkins as Robert (Thomas Colleymoore)
  • Sebastiano Pitruzzello as Max (Cecil Haversham and Arthur the gardener)
  • Liam Horrigan as Jonathan (Charles Haversham, the corpse)
  • Tom Hayward as Dennis (Perkins the butler)
  • Olivia Charalambous as Annie, the stage manager
  • Jake Curran as Trevor, the lighting and sound operator

The understudies are Stephanie Astrid, who covers Sandra and has performed at the Sydney Opera House, Stuart Vincent and Tom Bulpett. The director is Hannah Sharkey, a former resident director on the West End run.

Schedule and Tickets

  • Dates: November 6 to 22, 2026
  • Fridays: 8 PM
  • Saturdays: 3 PM and 8 PM
  • Sundays: 1:30 PM and 6:30 PM
  • Venue: The Theatre at Solaire, Solaire Resort Entertainment City, Parañaque
  • Where to buy: TicketWorld, or the Level 2 Solaire Box Office (11 AM to 8 PM, closed 2 to 3 PM)

Prices are subject to TicketWorld fees.

  • Orchestra Center Front: ₱6,348
  • Orchestra Center and Sides: ₱5,290
  • Premium Gold Center and Sides; Orchestra Center and Sides Back: ₱4,232
  • Balcony Center Front: ₱3,174
  • Balcony Center Back: ₱2,645
  • Balcony Side: ₱1,056.95

Updates on the run are posted by GMG Productions. Our earlier report has the original announcement. GMG’s next show at the same theater is Chicago, in March 2027.

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