FAWLTY Towers meets Michael Frayn's play-within-a-play Noises Off when disaster strikes York Theatre Royal from Tuesday in the Play That Goes Wrong.

Written by actors Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, this Mischief Theatre Company spoof of a college theatre production already has gone very much right in two West End runs and picked up awards on the Edinburgh Fringe after its pub theatre beginnings.

"The first incarnation was an hour-long version at a little pub, The Old Red Lion, in North London at Christmas 2012," says Henry Lewis, introducing Mischief's cult hit. "We did it there for f ive weeks, brought it back the following March, then played Traflagar Studios and took it to the Edinburgh Fringe last summer."

York audiences will experience an expanded version of the two Henries and Sayer's comic tale of Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society's struggle to stage a 1920s' murder mystery. Anything that could go wrong does go wrong as the accident-prone student thesps battle on against the - now lengthened - odds to arrive at the final curtain.

"It's a full two-act show that we're doing specifically for this tour up to July; just over two hours including the interval," says Henry. "We had to look at what we could extend, and it was quite a tricky process working out what would work; what would need to be made more spectacular for a theatre tour and how we could make jokes bigger to fill the space, after playing to only a 149-seat capacity at The Pleasance Above in Edinburgh."

The writers found they had "lots of stuff " they could add. "While we were running the show, we were always having ideas about how we might add to it, build it up," says Henry. "At the beginning of the tour, there was lots of new material we put on, and we're constantly tweaking things, especially as all three writers are in the cast."

That cast still numbers eight, six of whom play student actors, the other two playing stage management. "But one major change we've made is that the first version had just one setting, but now it's set in two rooms," says Henry.

He describes the show as "quite a traditional farce on one level". "There's certainly a big element of slapstick and we hark back to silent movies and Buster Keaton," he says. "You also have the two levels to the play: the drama society putting on a murder mystery, like in Michael Green Art Of Coarse Acting plays.

"But I think that even though it's a play within a play, everyone can relate to it because the things that go wrong are fairly universal. Everyone knows what it's like to make mistakes and feel embarrassed - and people love the idea of a stage play going wrong. People have often come up in past shows and said the bits they like most are the ones when it goes wrong. That's when yo get the most truthful responses on stage, which emphasies that it's live."

The Play That Goes Wrong goes wrong at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk